Bones Grow from the Middle to Both Ends (english version)
by meandmyinsanity
Summary: Lizzie Bennet knew about a lot of things: How to best handle one night stands and hangovers, keep Charlotte from doing dumb things, save the world, her friends and her sanity with Chinese food and most important of all: HOW TO SURVIVE BEING A MED STUDENT! But all those abilities were suddenly of no use at all when it came to one William Darcy. Her fucking professor. Modern AU.
1. Prologue

Prologue:

The first thing she felt, was the warmth.

She felt the sheets, tangled around her legs and between her feet, cutting her body in two halves, where the edge of the blanket slightly ran across her lower back.

She felt the rays of sunshine, dancing over the bare skin along her spine, tickling and teasing. She kept her eyes closed, sensed the more compact warmth of her hair that covered her neck and shoulders.

She was aware of her hands under the white pillow, just as much as she was conscious of the smooth and soft fabric under her cheek. She turned on her side, lightly lifting her knees to her chest, suddenly becoming aware of the fact that she was naked.

And then it took all her willpower not to rip her eyes open, jump out of the bed and grab her clothes like some sort of saving anchor.

_What the hell happened?_

She felt the prickling in her throat and down her stomach, as if she'd drunken the adrenaline that was now surging through her veins.

She breathed in and paused, slightly panic, when his scent hit her nose. A mix of cigarettes and citrons, even though she knew, he didn't smoke. None of them did.

Something like regret crawled up her fingers, her calves, her throat, centred itself in the lump in her throat, she'd gotten to know so well in the past few months.

_What have I done?_

Something other, something _warm_, suddenly touched the sensitive skin on her back, danced like the sunlight before with the slight difference that it was no light touching her, but skin on skin and bones against bones.

And the goosebumps it aroused were as real as the hand on her back, drawing patterns.


	2. Chapter 1 Oh shit!

**A/N: So it's here at last... In some of my earlier one shots i already mentioned my endeavour to translate my multi-chapter story from german to english and finally, finally, the first chapter is ready;)**

**I hope you'll like it and I hope to be able to upload frequently, there won't be a schedule because I'm going to post chapters as soon as the translation is ready;) This is still a work in progress, so if you have any complaints or suggestions, please tell me and I'll try to get better, same goes for my english;)**

**Some things to this story: The rating of this one is a pretty strong T, for those of you who have read Long Live the King and its sequel: It goes in that direction, so sex is mentioned but not explicit, also my characters curse, a lot and I'm not going to apologize for it, because it makes them human and slightly more believable. The thing that keeps me thinking about changing the rating to M is because of some themes like drug abuse and violence/ suicide later on in the story, it doesn't really take place up front, but it happens and it's discussed and has lasting effects (as a warning, this Lizzie is not always a sunshine). So if you have a problem with it, don't read, or if you think it's to heavy tell me and I'll change the rating, that's a constant offer;) **

**I'm also going to post a soundtrack before each chapter that is essential for it, for this one it is: Machine - Regina Spektor;)**

**So now I'll quit rambling and let's get to the story, I'm really excited to go on this journey with you;)**

**Disclaimer: *inspects nails, looks up randomly* Oh I still don't own Austen, can someone please tell me, when I do?!**

* * *

**Chapter 1: **Oh Shit!

She'd been late that morning, the first day of the new semester.

Hungover from the "Welcome-Back-Party" with Charlotte, that escalated quickly from "just a drink at Philips" (the Pub situated under their shabby apartment) to a tour through a variety of different clubs, a drunken race at the water front of the Thames and a following collapse in the just as shabby apartment of two guys.

Between the moment, where the blonde, taller one of the two stuck his tongue in her mouth and the second, his hand slipped under her shirt, her mind thankfully became clear enough, so that she could disentangle herself, grab Charlotte, who seemed to be glued to the other, smaller guy with the sweaty hands, and to catch a cab in order to go home.

The morning after had been brutal, Lizzie had completely forgotten to set up her alarm clock and only awoken at half past eight, because her totally insane and manic mother thought it to be the best time to tell her daughter via phone everything about the New-Age-Miracle-Cure, she was so excited about.

"Healing Stones, Lizzie! Mrs Long from across the street recommended them! She said, rose quartz had been a blessing for Richard's potency problems!"

"Mom!", Lizzie had protested and placed the phone on the mattress next to her ear, even in this position her mother's shrill voice was more than clearly audible.

"I am absolutely convinced, she's right, Agatha is always so knowledgeable about these things, her niece Louise keeps updating her... however, Lizze, that's the reason I bought a bunch of them for your father-"

"Mom!" Definitely awake now, she'd sat up halfway before her head had gotten in the way and forced her to to lie back down on the pillow. Her mother in the meantime clinked along animatedly.

"Don't play coy with me, young lady! As if it's something so unthinkable that two mature adults still have an active sexlife!" Lizzies mouth escaped another moan, which admittedly could also be attributed to the throbbing headache, that now started. "... even though things with me and your father..."

"Mom, I got to go!", she interrupted her mother's tirade hurriedly, before Mrs Bennet could reveal things, Lizzie would only be able to talk about in therapy sessions.

"Wait, Lizzie!", her mother shrilled. "Jane is coming to the city this weekend, she wanted to tell you herself, but I told her not to, because I wanted to call you myself to tell you about this delightful idea, Mrs Long had-"

"Jane's coming?", Lizzie asked, now wide awake.

"Oh yes! She has a job interview on Saturday! It happened on short-notice, otherwise she would have told you beforehand, I'm sure."

"Didn't know, Jane was looking for a new job", Lizzie mumbled in her pillow, halfway successfully managing to suppress her headache.

Jane, her oldest sister, was a teacher at the local primary school in Meryton, their home town, and the nicest person, Lizzie had ever met.

"Do you remember the nice, young men, Jane is dating since summer?"

"The doctor?"

"Exactly! Such a well bred, handsome young men and he's rich, too! His name is Bingley!"

"Like the business tycoon?"

"His son! He did some surgeries at Netherfield Hospital, Jane met him there, while taking one of her charges to the ER – nasty story, you know..."

"Yeah, I remember", Lizzie replied, eyes closed, while listening to her mother. "Lots of blood and all that stuff, right?"

"However! The two of them met and it was love on first sight and now they are as good as married!"

"They're engaged?!" Her favourite sister not telling her of her engagement was strange indeed, even though Janie was extremely cautious when it came to talking about feelings.

"It's all but certain!", her mother declared exuberantly and her high-pitched voice caused Lizzies ear to ring with pain. "He worships her! Who couldn't? My dear sweet Janie..."

Okay, that certainly explained a lot... her mother was again totally irrational.

"So why the sudden job interview?"

"Charles is now back in the city and the both of them didn't want to turn their relationship into a long-distance one, so Jane is now moving in with him and also looking for a new job as a teacher... Why they couldn't move here in the first place is beyond me. Meryton is such a pretty little town, the doctors at the hospital love him and Jane got her job here, also the school-district is one of the best and the neighbourhood is just perfect for children... besides he promised me to attend at least one Friday-dinner at hour house-"

"Mom, I'm sure, he'll attend lots of dinners at your home, if the thing between him and Jane is as serious as you say-"

"What are you talking about? Of course it's serious, he loves her!"

"I'm just saying.."

"Nonsense, child! I'm sure Jane is going to sport a pretty shiny stone on her ring finger really soon!"

"Mom..." Lizzie knew her mother and she new her tirade about matrimony and children by heart and if she wouldn't stop her now...

"When are you going to get married, Lizzie? It's been a while since you brought a nice young man home with you! You know, I expect grandchildren and the clock is ticking..."

"Mom, I'm twenty-three!"

"Exactly! You know, I wasn't much older than you, when I-"

"Yeah, I know", Lizzie interrupted her. "I need to stop now, Mom, gotta go! Tell Janie, she should give me a call, okay?"

"But Lizzie!"

"Bye Mom!"

Groaning with pain she shut her phone and that was the exact moment her eyes fell on the blinking display of her alarm clock.

"Shit!"

"Charlotte!", she shouted while half jumping, half falling out of bed. Charlotte just mumbled something in her pillow, when Lizzie threw open the door to her room, toothbrush in one hand, painkillers in the other.

"Come on, Charlotte, move your lazy ass out of that bed, we're so fucking late!" Charlotte just groaned something inaudible and turned on her other side.

"Charlotte?", Lizzie asked from the kitchen while turning on the water boiler.

"I told you to shut up!", Charlotte yelled from her room and buried her face in the pillow.

"Charlotte, we have to go!"

"I'm not coming!"

"It's the first lecture, do you remember?"

"Fuck you", was all Charlotte replied.

"Thank you very much."

She left Charlotte there and walked down the street to the tube station in her big, grey sweatshirt, leggings and boots, her hair a barely tamed mess, cascading down her back.

She was not hopelessly late, if she made haste now, it would probably just be some five or ten minutes and knowing her professors, she was pretty sure, she wouldn't be _that_ late.

Thermos flask in hand, she walked down the the corridor to the lecture theatre twenty minutes later just in time to see the slowly closing door before her.

"Wait!", Lizzie cried out and slid along the tiled floor just in the direction of the door and slipped right through the small opening before it closed with a loud thud behind her.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

"You're too late", a deep, dark voice sounded right behind her. She looked up. Tall, pale, black hair, classic profile. He wore a suit and looked like he was just on the way to some job interview at a bank.

_Freshman_, she thought, even though he was a lot older then her, but that didn't matter much in Med School. She rolled her eyes, they were always so _proper_.

"Yeah, smarty-pants", Lizzie shot back and walked up the stairs to the tiers.

"Perhaps, Miss - "

"Bennet." She leaned back in one of those seats and pulled her knees up, pressed them against her chest, even though there wasn't much space to begin with.

"Miss Bennet, perhaps you should curb your night time activities to a minimum and actually invest your energy in trying to be punctual for class."

She raised her chin, a derisive smile playing around her lips. "And what exactly qualifies you to judge my night time activities?"

Lizzie saw how the muscles in his jaw set and how he pressed his lips tightly together.

"See?" She laughed in her coffee mug.

"It doesn't change the fact, that you're too late."

"May I give you some sort of advice, Mr - ?"

"Darcy. And no, you may not."

"I'll be that forward either way and tell you that this a lecture and that there, contrary to a seminar, is no compulsory attendance at a lecture and the way I see it, said lecture hasn't even started yet, so keep calm and loose this tie." She eyed him carefully, said cravat had some little ducks on it. "You should definitely loose that tie."

He touched the knot and the look with which he regarded her, should have probably killed her off but only got her laughing.

"Any other problems with my clothing, Miss Bennet?"

She rolled her eyes, bank-guy hadn't only adopted the clothing but also the attitude of a tax collector.

"Then let us begin with today's lecture", he concluded and walked, to her utter horror, over to the speaker's desk.

Oh Shit.

It took some time, but the shock about having the stuffy bank-guy as her new Ethics Professor faded in the course of the lecture. Darcy was arrogant, stuck-up and so abominably rude to everybody, who even dared to ask a question, that at the end of those 90 minutes Lizzie didn't even feel the slightest bit of remorse over her previous words.

After a short glimpse into his own biography (Darcy had been a trauma surgeon in Derbyshire and had retired to this professorship after some years as an attending medical director even though he was probably not much older than perhaps thirty).

So when Charlotte, half an hour too late (sooner or later her bad conscience always kicked in), finally walked into the lecture theatre and Darcy nearly shouted at her from behind his desk, Lizzie had already concluded that the new professor was an ass and apparently had some deep rooted problems with mankind in general.

"What _poked_ him this morning?", Charlotte asked in a whisper, Darcy had looked over to them derisively, when "Miss Lucas!" had chosen a seat next to Lizzie.

"His girlfriend denied him the usual morning round after he scolded her for nuisance during an orgasm", Lizzie deadpanned while scribbling down notes.

Charlotte giggled behind her hand and earned a disapproving glance from the professor. "That guy really needs to work on his social skills", she declared, still giggling.

Lizzie snorted. "That would imply that he actually possesses some."

Darcy continued talking about his requirements and examination regulations and the whole group of students escaped an exasperated groan.

"He's crazy", Lizzie murmured and looked at him, her head shaking slightly in disbelief.

"I think I heard about him before", Charlotte suddenly exclaimed. "He owns half of Pemberley Research Institute."

"The miserable half?", Lizzie asked with a raised eyebrow.

"That guy is _insanely_ rich, Lizzie!"

"So why doesn't he leave us alone and gets a blow job from some blonde Botox-Bimbo on Hawaii?"

"Lizzie!"

"What?"

"He stares at you." Charlotte's eyes flew to Darcy. "I think he heard you."

Lizzie's eyes followed Charlotte's and met dark, unrelenting counterparts. She leaned back and groaned.

"Oh Shit."

The game continued on Thursday. Darcy was reciting something about modern ethical conflicts and Lizzie fed Charlotte with biting remarks until the girl nearly rolled on the floor laughing.

"Miss Bennet, if you are not otherwise occupied, then please do us the honour and elaborate your opinion on this topic", Darcy said pointedly and the glare, he directed against Lizzie, was probably meant to silence her.

But Lizzie just straightened up and focused on the board.

"In my opinion both approaches are problematic. Considering sexuality as genetically determined could lead to see homosexuality as some kind of genetic failure, while contemplating it as determined through outer influences could imply that said homosexuality or also paedophilia are caused by faults in the upbringing or the education of people. In both cases the effects on society and humanity in general would be disastrous."

"And what do you think determines sexuality?"

Lizzie leaned in and smiled slowly, a small sparkle in her eyes."Both."

He looked at her, hands on both sides of his desk. He wasn't wearing a tie this time but had opened the first button of his dress shirt.

"Can you give reasons for this, Miss Bennet, or does it just appear to be the most convenient answer?"

She held his gaze and cocked her head. "I like Punk music", she then said and lightly tipped with her index finger against the back of the chair in front of her.

"And what is this shocking revelation supposed to tell us, Miss Bennet?"

An amused smile slightly raised the corners of her mouth and the green of her eyes seemed to light up. "That even you can't tell me that it is genetically determined, because I can assure you that no one in my family shares my proclivities and according to the environmental factor I would need to faint everytime One-Direction is played on the radio." She cocked her head slightly. "Which I don't."

There was some laughter throughout the tiers and more than one smirking face and Charlotte, still slightly breathless while recovering from her laughing fit, experienced some great trouble trying to remain calm in the face of Darcy's ire.

"Thank you very much, Miss Bennet, for this illuminating explanation", Darcy replied stiffly and Lizzie dropped her head in mock display of a curtsy, while muttering "pompous prat" under her breath, which sent Charlotte nearly over the edge again.

* * *

Jane called on Friday.

She'd already told Lizzie on Tuesday that she would move to the city the following weekend – Jane would move in with Charles in his fancy penthouse in Belgravia – a fact that reduced her normally calm and serene older sister to a nervously stuttering (and, as Lizzie suspected, bright red coloured) fool and called again on Thursday to make sure that everything would run smoothly.

She hadn't refrained from teasing her sister, even though she was genuinely happy that Jane had found someone, who could actually make her smile.

"Oh Lizzie, he is the best of men! Always so nice and friendly..."

_Yeah Jane, that's exactly the way I would describe the guy, I'm going to live and have a dozen children with – as nice and friendly..._

Jane had invited her for Friday evening to some kind of Welcome-Party together with some of Jane's and Charles' friends.

"Charlie's sister Caroline and his best friend William are also coming – Oh my god, I'm going to die!"

"Why? Is he one of those incredibly spoiled bachelors with a big trust fund and Mommy-issue, who spends his time between London and L.A. buried in the first class and forces his exorbitant demands on everyone not fortunate enough to escape immediately, because he just can't be expected to use the same toilet paper as everybody else?"

"Lizzie", Jane had exclaimed horrified and gasped for air, while Lizzie, phone pressed between shoulder and ear, had been filling her shopping trolley with groceries.

"Or he's one of those business-guys, who always keep a straight face, bury themselves behind their laptops and quarterly reports and need more than a bottle of vodka to get their mouths to open up. He probably also has some blonde girlfriend on Tahiti, which he keeps satisfied with expensive jewellery and promises to marry her, something he will only do, when he reaches the age of forty and has no motivation to look for another one."

"Lizzie!"

"What? It's the truth!", she'd giggled while walking down the racks with the cereal boxes, deliberating whether or not she wanted Choco Crispies for breakfast tomorrow.

"Don't you think, you're a bit prejudiced, my dear?"

"Me? I think you're not prejudiced enough, Janie-Paney! Or how is it, Miss Sunshine-and-Rainbows-and-Oh-my-gosh-isn't-he-cute?"

"Lizzie, stop making fun of me!"

"I wouldn't dare make fun of you, dear sister", Lizzie had assured her and fought to suppress the smile, that threatened to consume her face and her voice for that matter, while grabbing the cereal box – she was in dire need of sugar after a day like that.

"So if this guy is nothing like I just imagined, then why are you so darn nervous?"

She'd sensed the hesitation in Jane's voice before her sister answered. "He means a lot to Charles and her relies on him... a lot... I just want to make a good impression... or ..."

"Or what, Janie? Charles a big boy. You don't think he'll just go and leave you high and dry, just because Mr High and Mighty shows to be displeased, do you?"

"No! No, of course not..", Jane had declared emphatically, but Lizzie had sensed the doubt in her voice and assured her sister to be there on Friday and provide every encouragement necessary.

"But you were true about one thing", Jane had said a bit giggly at the end. "Charlie says, that Will has been single for years."

"Sounds a bit demanding to me", Lizzie had murmured, while her eyes were roaming about the shelves with the sweets. _Like some people I know_, she mused and thought about their ethics professor, who had just this morning assigned a filling pages essay about Kant's categorical imperative.

"Sounds like you, Lizzie", Jane had remarked, still giggling. Lizzie had pouted a bit, even though Jane couldn't see that through the phone.

"You're not going to set me up again, Janie, do you? Remember the last time..."

"Oh my gosh! No!", Jane had cried. "He must be at least ten years older than you!"

"Thank goodness", was Lizzies only reply before she ended the call.

And now she was again on the phone. Agitated and a bit hysteric Jane nearly screamed in Lizzies ear, that her train was running late, that her taxi wasn't there and that Charles hadn't finished his shift at the hospital and was therefore unable to fetch her from the train station.

Lizzie grumbled something or other and in a rather foul mood disentangled herself from her blankets. It was already half past ten, but today was one of her rare free days so to her it felt like six in the morning.

"I'm gonna get you", she mumbled into the phone, while shuffling into the bathroom. Janes jubilant, decidedly _awake_ voice made Lizzie cringe and step onto the little bottles of nail varnish, scattered across the floor. "Ouch!"

She borrowed Craig's car, her neighbour from apartment 2C, who, still in boxers and with a slightly drugged expression on his face, gave her the keys with a non-descriptive sound and stumbled back towards his bed.

Craig's old car was a scrap heap, held together only by a fair amount of screws, but it dutifully made its kilometres and was the only possibility for Lizzie to collect her sister from King's Cross.

"Lizzie!", Jane exclaimed jubilantly, the moment the motor of the old Ford stopped with a spluttering sound in front of the railway building and hastened towards her sister, her trolley rattling behind her.

"Hi, Jane", Lizzie managed to get out and briefly hugged her sister, before she strode towards the building, Jane had just left.

"Lizzie, where are you going?", Jane asked bewildered and followed her with the obligatory "Klack-Klack-Klack"- sound the wheels made.

"Coffee", was all Lizzie could say and it was the only thing she murmured for the next ten minutes before she finally held a steamy cup of Cappuccino in her hand.

"Ah, Caffeine...", she murmured and breathed in deep.

Jane laughed. "I see you haven't changed much."

Lizzie tore her gaze from her most favourite object in the world right now and looked into her sisters bright blue eyes, which seemed to shimmer in the sunlight.

Jane wore a kind of blue business-outfit, elegant shoes and had her hair in a loose bun. Despite the rather formal attire she looked as fresh and radiant and beautiful as if she was walking down the beach in a light sun dress.

"And you look as perfect as always."

"Lizzie!"

"And still as sensitive to compliments." Lizzie flashed her sister a smile, indicating that she was only teasing. "See, nothing has changed."

"Oh my fucking goodness!", Lizzie exclaimed, when she first set foot into the huge, expensively decorated penthouse that seemed to belong to her sister's boyfriend.

Jane put her oversized sun glasses in her hair and looked around the apartment, an overwhelmed expression on her face.

"And I'd planned to do a simple party with wine and some snacks", she mumbled and collapsed onto one of the three sofas in what seemed to be the living room, followed by Lizzie.

"You still can do that, you know", Lizzie replied and stared out of the vast floor-length windows, which provided a breathtaking view over the city and the Thames.

"Oh gracious, No!", Jane cried out. "With an apartment such as this one, there needs to be at least some three-course menu and a bunch of waiters and of course champagne!"

Lizzie looked at her amused. "Don't you think, you're overdoing it a bit?"

"Ah, I don't know... Why hasn't Charles said anything?" She looked a bit doubtful at the ceiling and the oversized chandelier, that hung there.

"Didn't he mention, somewhere between those two lines, where it said: "Jane, I love you" and "Do you want to move in with me?", the fact that he is the proud owner of a penthouse in Belgravia?" She looked around. "A really huge penthouse for that matter."

"No", Jane sighed distressed. "He only said, that he had an apartment here and that there would be enough space for the two of us."

"You two have plenty of space here. For you, for him and your five children and if you're careful enough you don't even get to see each other." She pointed at the length of the room, which could easily contain hers and Craig's apartment at the same time. "I mean this thing is enormous, just hope that it's not some kind of compensation."

"What kind of compensation?", Jane asked bemused.

"Some men tend to buy overly... large things, if their lacking magnitude in certain other areas", Lizzie explained and managed to put her arms in front of her head before the cushion, Jane aimed at her, found its target. Both girls were giggling.

"Who told you that?", Jane burst out, gasping for air.

"Uh, Anne has a lot of those stories in store, if you ever get bored..."

"I'll give her a call", Jane concluded and Lizzie sighed.

"Just so you know, if Mom ever finds out where you're living right now, she'll probably have a fit."

"Oh god, please don't tell her", Jane whispered, suddenly horrified and buried her face in the cushion, that, just mere moments ago, had been misused as a projectile.

"Oh, don't worry", Lizzie said and jumped a little closer to her sister. Head placed on Jane's shoulder, she looked at her a bit sheepishly. "She already knows."

"Lizzie.."

"Come on, Jane. When will Charlie be back?

Jane looked up, just the mention of his name seemed to restore her spirits. "Round about 5 o'clock. He said, I should organize whatever I want for the party."

"Okay, perhaps we should start with shopping, don't you think?"

Jane looked her in the eye, a bit of fire in her gaze. "Okay."

"Then let's go!"

All in all it hadn't been such a bad idea, Lizzie Bennet concluded, while sitting with slighlty bent knees in a shopping trolley, which was moved through the insanely long aisles in the supermarket by her sister, and hoarding the groceries between her legs.

There was definitely an advantage to observing people from this vantage point, because most of them didn't even notice that there was another human being in the trolley.

Jane's continuing monologue over possible party snacks, which sounded more and more like the menu of some fancy restaurant (_really, whoever has the brilliant idea to offer caramelised grilled chicken at a party?_), only afforded the bare minimum of attention and some occasional, mumbled affirmation, while putting back the unnecessary, albeit ridiculous stuff, Jane threw into the shopping trolley.

"How's university?", Jane asked, when finally arriving at the pay desk (or in Lizzies case: sitting in front of it). "It's year 4, isn't it?"

"Jup", Lizzie said and popped the syllable like a bubble.

"Anything new?"

"Just an ethics professor, who seems to be an ass." She looked at the box of ice-cream at her feet. _Walnut? Honestly, Jane?_

"Lizzie!"

"Really Jane", she turned around in the trolley. "Isn't crying out my name all the time getting on your nerves or something?"

Jane's perfectly rosy red lips contorted into a smile. "Lizbit, you can't just go out and randomly call people asses only because they tend to disagree with you."

"First, I don't call people _randomly_ a certain part of the human anatomy. Second, Lizbit is nearly as worse as the constant "Lizzie" and third", she turned around completely to face her innocent target, "honestly, Jane? _Asses_? You know, I totally agree with correct wording and all that stuff, but _asses_?"

"I'm a teacher, Lizzie."

"Yeah", she turned back to face the front. "In elementary school, Janie. Don't tell me that you're often declining _asses_ in primary school or else I'm really going to loose my faith in our whole educational system."

Jane laughed out happily and Lizzie could do nothing but grin at the sound.

It had always been that way. Even when she was little, Jane had had that effect on other people. A smile of hers could lift the spirit of a whole class and even grim old grandfathers contorted their wrinkled faces in smiles, when little, blond Jane, the angel, stood in front of them lisping (she had a tooth gap at that age)and offered them a piece of cake.

"You never had any faith in the first place, Lizzie." She moved the trolley a bit to the side to let an elderly woman with a bunch of carrots pass by. "Which is kind of hurting my sensibilities, dear sister."

Her sister just snorted and grabbed some chocolate bars from a shelve near the pay desk.

"As long as you stop declining four-letter words, my faith remains intact. I mean, where would we be without crepe paper, glue and glittering pens?"

"Sure you're not mixing up primary school with yourself, sweetheart? I'm aware of the hoard in your desk drawer and I know you're always stealing some pens of mine..."

Lizzie crossed her arms in front of her chest, while Jane let another old lady pass by. "What should I do with glittering pens?"

"That's what I'm asking myself." Jane started packing out the trolley and stole Lizzie's chocolate bars out of her hand.

"I'm pretty sure, Charlotte is eating them...", Lizzie mused while helping her sister.

"If you say so, my dear."

"... pretty sure... Her tongue was glittering purple these days..."

Jane arched an eyebrow. "If you say so..."

* * *

They managed to get back to Charlie's and now Jane's apartment in no time (the concierge waved to them in a friendly manner) and the sisters began to prepare the snacks for the party.

"Are you serious, Jane?", Lizzie asked in between, while around her there were cookbooks opened, vegetables cut and spices scattered across the kitchen surfaces, additionally it whizzed and whooshed around her until she felt like being stuck in some big, lively witch cauldron.

Both of them were totally absorbed with cooking and decorating (Jane had selected the colour scheme on their way back to the apartment and Lizzie now helped transforming the boring purple napkins in some fairy-tale figures), when suddenly the loud bang with which the door fell shut, indicated Charles arrival.

"Jane", he exclaimed and with a big smile on his face entered the living room/kitchen zone.

The first thing Lizzie noted was the wild manner in which the pale red blond strands of Charlie's hair were standing out in every direction and second was the impossible huge grin on his face, that made her want to cuddle him like some teddy bear. Which was really not disturbing at all.

"Charlie!", Jane cried and flung, Disney-style, her arms around his neck.

"Hurray", Lizzie murmured slightly ironic, but smiled, when Charlie (after disentangling himself from Jane at some point) also hugged her and told her to feel welcome.

"Jane, told me a lot about you", he said smiling and threw Jane a look of such adoration, that Lizzie nearly choked on the water in her throat.

Charles looked around the kitchen and deeply impressed took in all those plates with food and the decorations (Lizzie was at the moment holding a slightly unfortunate version of a swan in her hand), before smacking his hand against his forehead, like a little schoolboy.

"Shit, oh I totally forgot that Will is coming soon. He needed to work late today and his apartment is an hour drive away from here, that's why I told him to get changed in our apartment instead."

"Oh okay", Jane managed to get out, but Lizzie could see that the prospect of seeing Charlie's best friend so soon made her quite nervous.

She stood up and placed the mishandled swan on the kitchen counter, before kissing Jane on the cheek. "That's my cue, Janie. I need to get dressed and, you know, take care of Charlotte before she attempts to do something really... dumb."

"Oh", Jane said and stood a little lost in the middle of the kitchen, between the humming pots and pans, the heaps of bowls and plates, that looked like wavering towers.

"Come on, Janie", Lizzie whispered. _Don't look at me like that! You know that doesn't work with me!_

"You can get dressed here", Charlie suggested, noting the forlorn look in Jane's eyes.

"And what exactly do I put on?", Lizzie asked with a half smile.

"Oh, you could borrow something from me!", Jane exclaimed, a sudden smile on her lips, that hadn't lost any of its vibrancy in the past few years since childhood.

"Janie...", Lizzie said hesitatingly, she wanted to support her sister in every way possible, but something inside her seemed to scream at her to get her things and run away as fast as she could.

(Yeah, she was a bit schizophrenic at times, but she only obeyed the little voice in her head, when it was pleading her most civilly).

"Ah, come on, I got the perfect dress for you! Besides, what can Charlotte possibly do? You've already confiscated the matches and the lighters last month, didn't you?"

Lizzie cocked her head slightly. "That's true."

"Okay, then let's go, Charlie can do the rest... can you, Charlie?" Jane had pulled her sister along with her and now looked at her boyfriend expectantly. Charlie's head bobbed a bit confused from one Bennet-sister to the other, before he nodded and reached for the swan-figure.

"Come on, Lizzie!" With a sigh she followed her sister into the oversized bedroom and the walk-in closet, where Jane's valise was opened up on the floor.

"My other stuff is still at home", Jane explained. "I'm going to get them in the next few weeks if all goes according to plan."

Lizzie smiled and and took place on the chaise longue (there was really a chaise longue), while Jane was working her way through the contents of her luggage until she produced a knee-length, sleeveless, flowing blue dress and tossed it at Lizzie.

"Go and get dressed", she commanded, while looking for her own dress.

"You're getting more demanding each day", Lizzie complained while stripping off her jeans. "Must be the big sister gen."

"Oh really?", Jane replied with a smile. "If that's so, than you definitely have it too. Just think about Kitty and Lydia."

"Grr", Lizzie made, reluctant to even think about their totally out of of control younger sisters, while putting on the dress.

Surprisingly it actually fit and what was even more astonishing was the fact, that she actually liked it, how the soft, silky material clung to her body. There were a couple of ribbons with silver beads on the ends to be laced below her chest – Lizzie managed to get tangled up so hopelessly in those few silk ribbons, that Jane had to take them out of her hand and disentangle all those knots before her sister got to strangle herself.

If there was something in life Lizzie Bennet had no knowledge of, it were (to the utter misery of her mother) dresses. She preferred simple things like Jeans and leggings and cotton shirts, things, that would also survive a washing at the wrong temperature and inadequate depositories.

"So", Jane said, after having finally solved the mess and gave her a pat on the head. "Bathroom and don't you dare come out without any make-up on your face!"

"Aye, Mom", Lizzie obeyed with a curtsy and a smirk, met by Jane with a sigh and a roll of her eyes.

She didn't need much time in this fancy, big bathroom and certainly spend more of it admiring the bathtub of the size of a whirlpool than wasting it on her appearance.

She looked at her image in the mirror. Wild, dark brown curls, framing her face, never to be tamed neither by any brush nor the constant bemoaning of her mother about her savaged appearance. There were freckles on her nose and her green eyes, slightly askew like those of a cat, sparkled in a blue shade when she laughed. Lizzie knew she wasn't as beautiful and perfect as her older sister, but she'd come to terms with it a long time ago, she was aspiring to become a doctor not a supermodel.

The bell rang and Lizzie was on her way to leave the bathroom when she suddenly became aware of the fact, that she wasn't wearing any shoes and even though her heavy black boots with the self-applied spikes, she wore earlier that day, probably would distribute to a rather interesting fashion statement, she highly doubted that Jane would be overjoyed by it.

She examined her feet, which still looked presentable after the last pedicure, Charlotte had dragged her to.

_How bad can it be?_

Really bad apparently.

Lizzie was just out of the bathroom and on her way to the living room/kitchen area, when the front door suddenly sprang wide open and she heard a male voice cursing.

She was on the verge of answering this rather rude intruder (something between "Who are you and what are you doing here?" and "You should really take care of the things, that come out of your mouth, they could potentially hurt people"), when Charlie greeted him with a loud "Hey, Will!" and came along the corridor towards the man, who apparently was his best friend.

"Fuck it, some people should really get their drivers licence revoked!", the man cussed angrily. "Have you seen that junker directly in front of your door? I had to drive around the block three times to find another parking lot! Fuck, Charlie, you know that's my space! Besides, which halfway sane person drives such a _thing_?"

"Uh", came out of Charlie's mouth, when Lizzie turned around the corner and into the corridor.

"That would be me", she announced, arms crossed in front of her chest. "And which grown man wails like a baby because he was denied his favourite toy?"

The newcomer's head jerked up, tall, dark, handsome. She stopped dead in her tracks and her mouth fell open like she was some kind of stupid goldfish.

"Oh Shit."

She was fucked up royally.

* * *

**A/N: Okay, that's it, hope you like it;) The beginning, so this one and the next chapter are probably the closest this story gets to the original, I mean, Netherfield, Rosings, Hunsford! and of course Pemberley will happen more or less like the book, but there's lots of a AU, a slight cross-over and some original characters as well;) and it gets a bit darker, but the humour will remain (or at least what I think is humour, I'm the only one laughing over my jokes most of the time, so I don't know how funny it'll be for you, I'll try anyway;) **

**Okay stay tuned until next time and: Reviews appreciated! Same goes for PMs and favourites/follows;) I'm a sucker for those but most of all reviews;) **

**As an afterthought: I'm still no native speaker, sniff, I wish I was english, I just love London;) but as it is, please tell me if I write complete crap;)  
**


	3. Chapter 2 Not Fair!

**A/N: Okay, hey guys! I'm really sorry for the delay, especially so because of the warm reception and all those reviews, follows and favourites;) you guys tend to amaze me! Didn't know you were that eager to read my story;) But alas there were some issues with betaing and because I didn't want to keep you waiting any longer, here is the second chapter, unbetaed, I will eventually replace it with a correct version, so tell me if something is off;) I'm always grateful for those comments;)**

**I forgot to tell you that there's a playlist on my authors page with a list of songs that reflect Lizzie and Darcy's personalities, which influenced me while writing and I'm updating it regularly, so if you listen to the songs, there might be some foreshadowing;)**

**To answer some of your reviews: **

**cutelilmochi: I didn't really get your review and didn't understand the comment about one of them walking away... However I think the whole part of this story is that none of our beloved characters walks away, because otherwise there wouldn't be a story... nonetheless this story is a lot about running away in particular, so perhaps you're not so far away from the truth;) either way, thanks for your review;)**

**margaeryen: If you like the closeness to the original... well let's just say, it's going to stray a lot, so please be aware of that;) about the dark parts... you get some hints of it in this chapter, so read closely;)**

**guest: I thought so too! That's the whole point of the argument in my opinion;)**

**Anyway, I'll cease rambling if you've got questions: review or PM me;)**

**Soundtrack: Planetary - My Chemical Romance (the song played at the end, lyrics in italics, sadly not mine;)**

**Disclaimer: And as always: still not owning Austen... honestly I'm not wearing corsets;)**

* * *

**Chapter 2: ** Not Fair!

One of the first things you learn in life is the fact that it's everything but fair.

In other words: Life is a meanie and it likes to stick out its tongue.

So when you're barely six years old and whining, because _everybody else_ is allowed to stay up late at night watching television, your parents like to paraphrase it with an exasperated groan and a "it's the way it is"-explanation (the latter, Lizzie remembered mostly from her father, her mother rather liked to complain about her daughter's ungratefulness).

Or when you're fourteen and beating yourself up about the fact, that your nose is too long, your hips too wide and your boobs not big enough an exasperated best friend likes to put it in an "need a visit to a plastic surgeon or is a shot with a gun cheap enough?"-groan just to shut you up (she hadn't been talking to Florence for a whole two weeks afterwards).

At eighteen then, when you're faced with the hot, blazing African sun and you barely now how to get up in the morning, people stop rephrasing the ultimate truth and just put it in your face when dragging you out of bed.

Resign yourself and make the best out of it, it's not like anyone cares.

And in the end that's, what she'd always been doing. She'd managed to survive her crazy family, her home town and High School, no matter the difficulties and acquired a place at one of the best London universities on her own. Lizzie knew how to fight beastly adversities, be it impending deadlines, bad friends or the worst of them all: Maths.

But this beat everything.

She stood there, mouth agape, barefoot in a knee-length silk-dress, in front of the utter _bastard_, that had filled her weekend with research and endless paperwork.

Professor. W. Fucking Darcy. Who, as an afterthought, was apparently called William.

He seemed to recover first.

"Miss Bennet", he managed to get out, clearly uncomfortable. Charlie's gaze travelled a bit confused from one to the other.

"Professor", Lizzie acknowledged, her arms still crossed in front of her chest, a derisive smile tugging at her lips.

"You know each other?", Charlie asked good-naturedly, before the sudden realisation hit him. "Wait... Professor?" His head rotated back to Darcy, who had found back into his usual blank mask.

"Jup", said Lizzie. "My ethics professor..."

"Ah, Lizzie, are you still complaining about that idiot?", Jane suddenly chimed in and also entered the hallway. She stopped dead in her tracks, when seeing the newcomer, the wide skirt of her cream-coloured dress, flowing around her knees.

Lizzie grinned. "Apparently."

"Oh", was the only sound, that escaped Jane, while her eyes were jumping from Lizzie to Darcy and back. "William... he is you professor?", she asked incredulously. Lizzie's grin grew even wider.

"Jup, isn't it, professor?" She cast a quick glance at Darcy, who didn't seem to be entirely comfortable with the situation, he found himself in.

"Ah...", he said, while Charlie was splitting his sides laughing. Jane looked confused from one to the other and it was apparent that she deeply regretted having called Darcy an idiot.

"You're welcome, William", she finally managed to get out and shook his hand.

"Oh Oh", Charlie chimed in, looking like he was close to his next laughing fit. "If you're her professor, Darcy, is she therefore the student, you complained about? The one teasing you about your tie-" At this point an indignant looking professor effectively cut him short by pushing his bag into Charlie's stomach region.

Lizzie had to suppress a laugh when the whole party (a gasping Charlie, a stoic professor and Jane, who evidently felt awkward with the strained atmosphere in the group) made their way into the living room/kitchen area.

"Oh Lizzie, you're not wearing any shoes!", Jane exclaimed suddenly, when she passed by. Her sister looked down to her bare feet on the dark hardwood floor and examined them curiously as if surprised by the fact.

"You didn't give me any", she replied while the same amused smile played at the corners of her mouth.

"And _that_ has prevented you from grabbing a pair of mine?" Jane perched her hands on her hips. "It never did before, you know."

"Hey, those shoes were mine!", Lizzie exclaimed indignantly. "I only took them back, after you _hid_ them in your closet."

Jane arched a perfectly sculptured eyebrow. "May I remind you, dear sister, that you've stolen them from me in the first place?"

Lizzie pouted. "I haven't _stolen_ them, as you put it."

"No I gave them to you for _prom_, after you decided in the last possible minute to actually go there."

"Oh Oh!", Charlie cried out and elbowed Darcy, but the dark-haired man didn't even bat an eyelash. "That sounds like sisterly affection, doesn't it?"

"If you say so, Bingley", he answered curtly, his eyes fixed on the Bennet-sisters.

Lizzie threw him an angry glare, the man was a freaking statue, before her eyes lit up and a smile broke free across her face.

"Bingley?", she asked and cocked her head. "Oh, how sweet, do you belong to that illustrious group of men, who call each other solely by their last name?"

She turned her head to the other side, when Charlie (again) started laughing, the professor just lifted his chin and looked down at her with a haughty expression on his face. "I don't understand what seems to be so exhilarating about it."

"Oh don't worry", she assured him laughingly, her eyes flashing. "It's completely normal for you not to a have a clue, what I'm talking about. Something about manly pride and the inability to admit feelings."

"Lizzie", Jane hissed, but she just waved it aside. "As long as you don't call me and Jane, Bennet 1 and Bennet 2, I can live with that."

"Wait a moment", Jane interjected, now standing next to Charlie, one arm around his waist. "Did I understand correctly? I'm Bennet 2?"

Lizzie shrugged. "I'm just way more awesome than you, sorry my dear."

"Hey, I'm the eldest", Jane complained, but couldn't repress the amused smile, that made her lips quiver.

"Awesomeness comes before Age", Lizzie replied with a side glance to Darcy, whose frozen demeanour showed, that he'd rather be anywhere else right now.

"Doesn't it say: Age before beauty?", Jane retorted still smiling (a smile, that was mirrored by Charlie, while Darcy's stony face provided the perfect contrast to those two love birds).

_You should take their picture, put it in some gallery and call it: Happy, Happy and Frustrated_, she mused and smiled when she thought about the faces of hypothetical gallerygoers, when seeing the masterpiece.

"Oh no", she replied. "'Cause then you'd win in both categories and that's just not fair."

"I have to agree with her there", Charlie whispered in Janes ear, having taken control over his laughing fit. "Especially concerning the latter."

Jane's face turned into some interesting shades of red at his declaration, some of which looked distinctly like those of a ripe tomato. _I knew there was a disadvantage to pale skin..._

She cast a quick glance to Darcy, who'd witnessed the scene with a scowl on his face and rolled her eyes inwardly.

"We could take turns", she suggested, while jumping from feet to feet and doing a little dance in the middle of the hallway.

Jane laughed. "Let's go get you a pair of shoes first, Bennet 1."

"Your wish is my command, Bennet 2", Lizzie replied and dropped into a deep curtsy towards Charlie and Darcy before jumping down the hallway behind Jane.

* * *

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Lizzie looked slightly horrified from the patiently smiling face of her sister down to this absolutely murderouspair of HighHeels, Jane held in her hands. "Do you want me to sprain both my ankles?"

"They're not even 7 centimetres high, Lizzie, you'll survive it", Jane assured her. "Look, they have a ribbon in the middle, so you want fall out of them."

"Thanks for the nightmares, Janie", Lizzie muttered, while taking in the silk ribbon (it was blue, like her dress). "Now I'm not just scared about some broken bones, but also about falling out of them and hitting my nose on one of those granite surfaces out there. You know, blood would really ruin this dress..."

"Come on, just put them on", Jane practically begged and looked at her with those bright blue eyes, nobody was able to resist. _No wonder Charlie's putty in your hands, it works with me all the time..._

"Oh fine", Lizzie finally relented, albeit a bit grumpily. "But you pay the doctor's bill, understood?"

"Understood", Jane agreed happily and put a kiss on Lizzies head, before disappearing in the direction of the kitchen.

"The things I do for my sister...", Lizzie murmured, while pressing her feet into the ridiculously high shoes. Exactly as she suspected, the ribbons were of no use at all.

A bit unsteady at first and then more and more confident, she made her way into the living room/kitchen area, where Charlie and Darcy were occupying two of the three sofas.

She dropped into the third one opposite Darcy in a bit unladylike manner and slowly moved her feet. They were still alive, thank goodness.

"You wanna drink something, Lizzie?", Charlie asked and motioned towards the bottles on the low couch table. _Leave it to upper-class-kids to buy the alcohol.._

"Sure", she replied. "What do you got?"

"Let's see... there's whiskey, rum, brandy...", Charlie listed and swung his own glass, filled with an amber coloured liquid.

"Sounds like we're in some highly exclusive gentleman club or something like that...", Lizzie laughed. Darcy and Charlie looked at each other. "Oh my god, we are in a club like that!", she exclaimed, her green eyes wide open.

Charlie laughed. "Sorry, to disappoint you, but yours and Jane's presence just contradicts the premiss."

Lizzie laughed too. "I'm deeply sorry to interfere with your usual Friday evening." She caught the glance of the professor and winked. "No reason to get jealous."

The dark eyes widened barely noticeable at her comment and to her utter astonishment, she saw the muscles in his jaw harden suddenly, as if a dozen gates made of steel were shut down in a matter of seconds. _Okay, that guy definitely has some issues..._

"So what do you want?", Charlie asked and Lizzie tore her gaze away from Darcy.

"Do you've got some coke?", she asked and eyed the rum sceptically.

"Sure", Charlie answered. "Do you need caffeine, or what's up?"

"Caffeine is always needed", Lizzie replied grimacing. "But I fear, without some coke to mix, I won't be able to down any of this stuff." She crinkled her nose. "Really, that's only possible if you take it in shots."

Charlie laughed, Darcy stared. "Should I get you something from the kitchen?"

"Oh yes, please." She looked down at her feet. "I'm still not sure, if I'm going to survive this evening."

"Then why wearing shoes like that?"

Lizzie looked up, surprised that the high and mighty Mr Darcy had actually found his voice and deigned to address her.

"An advice, professor." She leaned a bit forward to face him adequately. "Never question women on their choice of footwear, it could prove to be dangerous."

His expression was blank. "That's now the second advice, you've bestowed upon me, Miss Bennet."

Lizzie sighed. "You should heed it, just like the first one, professor."

He arched an eyebrow and for some reason it irked her immensely, but before she could add something, Charlie was back with the bottle of coke.

She filled the mix into one of the glasses on the table, but stopped before raising it to her lips, staring a bit lost in thought into the dark liquid.

"What's up, Lizzie?", Charlie asked, raising his own glass for a toast.

"Just wondering, if I should rather go for painkillers this evening", she replied, without lifting her gaze from the glass.

"In any case you shouldn't be taking them together with alcohol", Darcy began, the look in his eyes even darker than before.

"Why?", Jane asked innocently, coming out of the kitchen. She balanced a tray with one hand and held a glass of wine with the other, sitting down next to her boyfriend, who immediately put an arm around her shoulders.

"Because otherwise you'll turn your liver into fricassee", Lizzie replied in Darcy's stead, unnerved by his arrogant tone and took a gulp. Painkillers wouldn't suffice in order to survive this evening.

Jane looked from one to the other and then back to Charlie, who just shrugged.

"Oh", she then said tentatively. "That doesn't sound nice."

Darcy rolled his eyes at her reply, something that ignited the angry spark in Lizzie's stomach even further.

"But you're getting drunk faster", she quipped and winked at Charlie and Jane.

"A poor excuse for the fact that you'll need a liver transplantation if you do it on a regular basis." Darcy. Again.

"Calm down, Darcy", Charlie interjected, who'd also witnessed Jane's confused gaze and Lizzie felt a sudden fondness for her sister's boyfriend.

"Don't you worry, professor", she added. "After your little sermon nobody in this room will even _get_ the idea to mix paracetamol with alcohol, less alone _act_ on it."

_And when, it'll be your drink..._

There was an awkward silence for a few moments, only broken sporadically by Charlie's good-natured attempts to create some kind of conversation, when Jane suddenly straightened up and asked Darcy what he'd like to drink. Lizzie looked up, surprised when she realised, that the professor was the only one in their small group without a glass in his hand.

"I don't drink", he said just like she expected him too, with a small frown on his forehead and lips tightly pressed together.

Lizzie laughed. "You should be careful of what you're saying, professor."

His dark eyes fixed themselves on her, his hand clutched the sofa until his knuckles were white.  
"And why is that?", he asked, his voice strained.

"Because you're not really clear in your comments. Did you want to say that you a) are not drinking at all, b) don't drink any alcohol or c) are not thirsty? Life is complicated enough, professor, without cryptic conversations, so don't subject people to decode your sentences, if you can so easily prevent confusion."

"And again you're telling me what to do, Miss Bennet", he replied and his lips contorted into a small smile, that didn't reach his eyes.

"What can I say, professor. You certainly bring out the worst in me." She countered his gaze, eyebrows arched in a provocative manner.

"Darcy doesn't drink any alcohol", Charlie chimed in, while refilling his own glass. "For nearly an eternity now."

"Oh really?" Lizzie's gaze went back to Darcy. "And why the abstinence, if I may ask?"

"You're a med student, Miss Bennet, I think you know everything about the physiological side effects."

"You're an addict?" Her eyebrow, if possible, was raised even higher. Darcy let out something akin to a sigh.

"No, Miss Bennet, and I'd prefer it if you'd let it remain my private affair."

Lizzie cocked her head slightly, as if she needed to think about it. "Fine", she then said, before a small smile tugged on her lips. "But only if you also respect _my_ privacy, Professor."

Darcy stared at her, slightly puzzled as it seemed and didn't directly find words to reply.

Jane and Charlie who'd followed the exchange like some tennis match, looked at them astonished, eyes wide open, before Charlie recovered first.

"You're still addressing each other formally?", he asked incredulously and without much eloquence. Darcy tore his gaze away from Lizzie, who'd fallen back into the cushions with a sigh and made attempts to answer his friend, when the doorbell suddenly rang.

"That must be Caroline", Charlie exclaimed with a quick glance at his watch. "She wanted to be here early to meet Jane."

"I'll go get changed", Darcy announced out of the blue and stood up. His expression was unreadable.

"I'll send her to your bedroom", Charlie joked while making his way towards the door. Darcy didn't reply while walking towards his room in such a hurry, that made Lizzie wonder whether or not "escape" would be the more fitting description.

* * *

She heard Caroline Bingley long before the woman actually entered the living room and even now, two hours later, her voice still droned on and on in her head like a broken record.

There were some things about people, Lizzie Bennet just couldn't stand. On one hand it were smells, beside the obvious candidates such as bad breath and sweat (onions were the third option), she had a distinctive problem with perfumed detergents.

It wasn't really about the exact smell of the detergent (even though jasmine/hyacinth was kind of a strange mix) but moreover about the fact, that it smelled so damn artificial that her nose seemed to contort and she felt like catching a cold (and if there's something med students, or doctors for that matter, really can't stand, it's being ill themselves).

On the other hand it was the really catastrophic taste in music some people seemed to have. Really, if someone wanted to torture her, there wasn't needed much, but a CD-player and a bunch of Techno Slash HipHop Slash Top40radio songs, to drive her mad.

And there was never enough alcohol to survive a party, that consisted of songs like that.

But there was one thing that topped all those detested attributes: Voices.

Every time she had to listen to someone, whose voice ticked her off one way or the other, she needed to refrain from shouting at them to shut the fuck up (she'd gotten a reprimand in primary school when she told a girl, who did a presentation about Elizabeth I with an emotionless, sluggish voice, the very same thing, including of course the four-letter word).

So when Caroline Bingley, a 1,80 metre high, spindly bag of bones with blonde hair and more than one boob-job, stalked in, Lizzie had to physically resist the urge to repeat the action from primary school.

"Hello Daaaaarling", she cried out when catching sight of Jane and blew some kisses with her lipstick covered mouth in the air around Jane's cheeks. "It's sooo niiice to actually get to knoooow you." Batting her eyelashes and with a voice that was in aspects of volume and shrillness comparable to the one of Mrs Bennet (on some really introverted days, Lizzie wondered if her high irritability concerning voices was rooted _there_) Caroline gave Jane the once-over before declaring her "utterly chaaarming" and asking where her dear "Daaarcy" was.

"He escaped", Lizzie explained, before someone else had a chance to answer Caroline's question.

"And you would beee?", the blonde woman asked, slightly appalled, her lips frozen in a form of utter stupidity, which she probably mistook for one resembling a blow-job-motion.

"Elizabeth Bennet", Lizzie declared, somehow feeling the need to introduce herself with her full name for no reason at all. "Jane's little sister."

"How..." Lizzie could see how the gaze of Charlie's sister wandered over her blue silk-dress with the ribbons down to her ribbon laced shoes. "...quaint", she then said and shook Lizzie's hand.

Lizzie shook it, but the look in Caroline's eyes remained cold despite the cheerful laugh and the image of some dead fish sprung to mind.

That had been two hours ago and now the party was in full swing. Darcy had at some point left the confines of his own room only to be immediately glued to an eager Caroline Bingley, who just couldn't leave his arm alone. Lizzie had registered it with an amused grin and deep satisfaction.

The Welcome-Party had evolved from just a small gathering to a fully grown party with music and a dance-floor and to Lizzie's astonishment, with just a little alcohol all those rich and successful business-guys and lawyers acted just like the broken students, she knew from some frat parties.

Meanwhile, Jane made her way through the crowds with some tray or other or was introduced to some of Charlie's friends from work and university. However she was beaming and looking radiant and that nearly, nearly made up for the fact that Lizzie's feet hurt like a motherfucker.

After some dancing she'd called a break, because she just wasn't used to walking around in shoes with such a high heel and so it happened that she overheard a conversation, she probably wasn't supposed to listen to.

"I don't know what you were thinking, Bingley." That was Darcy's voice. Apparently he'd gotten rid of Caroline for a few minutes, because his shadow stood at the other side of the room in between a group of slightly askew looking skeletons in designer robes.

"And I just don't get your problem, pal. It's a great party."

"Exactly. A party. Bingley, you told me it would just be a small gathering, a welcome party for your new _angel_, not such an _event_."

"Ah come on, Darcy. Relax!", Charlie prompted. "Get yourself something to drink and go dancing! I hate seeing you hiding in the corners like some antisocial eremite..."

"You know I don't drink, Charlie, and your sister is engaged at the moment."

"Then go dancing with someone else, old man, but get out of your hole or wherever you dug yourself into, because it's annoying as hell!" Admittedly Charlie's state of mind was at this point due to the frequent refilling of his glass probably not at its best, so therefore his way of expressing himself was not as congenial as usual.

"Don't expect that of me! You know damn well what hell of a punishment it would be for me to dance with someone I'm not acquainted with.!"

_So dancing with Caroline Bingley is therefore a pleasure? _

"So why are you not dancing with Lizzie? She's your student, you know her."

"Exactly, Bingley. She's my student." The derision nearly dripped from his voice.

"She's cute", Charlie quipped.

"She's tolerable at best, but not pretty enough to tempt me. Besides, she's a pain in the ass and it's not up to me to console weeping little girls, who were abandoned by their dance partners."

_Oh thank you very much, Darcy! In which century are you living in?_

"Oh you know, Darcy, there'll be a day when your arrogance will come back to you and bite you in the ass."

"I highly doubt that, Bingley. So now get up and go to your angel, you're wasting your time with me!"

That was it. The whole time during this rather unpleasant exchange she had been standing behind the half open cabinet door, busy with looking through Charlie's iPod for some good music and she'd heard everything. She thought about going over to him and explain to him with all the civility she could muster, that frankly, he was an ass, but then she decided against it and just slammed the door shut, after having modified Charlie's playlist.

Darcy flinched and turned around, looking at her quite aghast, when she flashed him a sarcastic smile and passed by, grinning on her way to the dance floor.

She danced for a while, before her feet started hurting again and she declared to no one in particular, that she needed a drink.

Lizzie didn't notice, that there was someone else in the dimly lit kitchen, until she closed the fridge and turned around to face the counter.

"Darcy, dammit!", she cried out and tried to calm her erratically beating heart, the professor sitting there in the shadows had completely thrown it out of its rhythm.

"Quiet, please", he admonished and took a gulp from his glass. Water, of course, he wasn't drinking anything else.

"Scared your fiancé is going to find you?", she asked with a grin and filled her glass with coke.

"She's not my fiancé!", he practically spat out before smashing his glass back against the granite surface.

"Quiet, professor, or else you're going to be found", she scoffed. "The fact that you're not even asking who I'm talking about, speaks for itself."

"Oh really?", Darcy asked and Lizzie saw that he had pushed the sleeves of his crisp white dress shirt back over his elbow. He had nice forearms, even though she had no idea why she actually noticed that.

"Jup, denial is a river in Egypt." He gazed at her and she saw his eyes sparkling in the dark, even though there were of the same shade as the room around them.

"I'm not denying anything", he replied and emphasized each word.

She laughed. "Of course not, professor. Because that would go against everything Kant ever said, wouldn't it?"

"I'm not really an admirer of Kant's philosophy, Miss Bennet." His fingers were tipping rhythmically against the cold surface between them.

"Oh really?" She arched an eyebrow. "Didn't sound like that yesterday."

"I said I'm not admiring him, not that he doesn't have some valid points in his argumentations, Miss Bennet."

"So basically you're just telling me, that you forced us to spend an entire weekend writing an essay about the moral concept of a guy, you think wrote a bunch of complete rubbish in his works?"

"I didn't say that", he answered rather defensively.

"No, but you're going to do so after we have thrown an entire weekend out of the window for that Sisyphean labour!" Now she was really getting angry.

"I think we need to have some rules for this arrangement", the professor remarked instead of an answer, while clutching his glass of water.

"You think so?", she asked sarcastically.

"Yes, like Bingley said, we're still addressing each other formally and that could be awkward in the long turn."

"Really?", she asked, sarcasm still dripping from her voice.

"I think we could both agree on dividing private and work related issues. If we're seeing each other outside of university, I'm not your professor and therefore you don't need to address me as such."

"And what am I going to call you instead?", Lizzie asked doubtfully.

Darcy shrugged. "William is a possibility, but Darcy would suffice, I reckon."

"Fine, Darcy it is."

He managed something akin to a smile and nodded. "And how am I going to call you? Lizzie perhaps?"

She cocked her head slightly, as if she needed time to think about it.

"Nah, I don't think so", she finally said, coincidentally at exact the same time a new song started (one of her favourites, which she found to her utter astonishment on Charlie's iPod).

_There might be something outside your window, but you'll just... never know..._

Darcy looked at her confused.

"And why however not, if I may ask?"

Lizzie shrugged. "Because only the guys I sleep or am friends with call me that. Since we're neither of the two, I suggest you stay with "Miss Bennet"."

He pulled his head back, his face an unreadable mask. Lizzie grinned and grabbed her glass, which was still half full.

_And if my velocity starts to make you sweat... than just don't let go... _

"You haven't forgotten that I'm "tolerable at best"?" She leaned in slightly, eyes fixed on his.

_And if the heaven ain't got a vacancy... then we just get up and go!_

"So after having cleared that, I'm going to get up and get drunk, okay? Without fearing that it might influence my mark, are we clear on that one?"

She came closer. "Because that's our deal, Darcy. Work and Private divided, you have no idea what I'm doing outside of Uni and it's not going to influence in any way the way you evaluate me, right?"

The professor just looked at her, his expression one of ice. She smiled and got up.

"Have fun with your fiancé!", she said before running back towards the dance floor and losing herself in a mix of light, bodies and music.

_I can't slow down, I won't be waiting for you! I can't stop now, because I'm dancing!_

She stuck out her tongue. Figuratively of course. Take that, you meanie!

* * *

**A/N: So I hoped it amused you at least a bit;) I just love Lizzie/Darcy interaction and there will be lots of it in this story, because nothing is as amusing as misunderstandings when you're actually talking to each other;)  
**

**So the next chapter is ready and should be up in the next few days, if this betaing issue doesn't resolve itself I'll post it uncorrected, so all mistakes are mine and mine alone so get out your tomatoes and start the battle! I tried my best;)**

**So Lizzie is a bit... tough... you could say, but she is the way she is for a reason, I'm not going to defend that, just stick it out with me and you'll know why.**

**Hmm, my break is soon over and I'm in no mood to travel back to Uni, four hours stuck in a train are just too long *whines a bit* I think I wanted to say something about this chapter but other than the random fact that I TOO have a major problem with perfurmed detergents (as does my ma, so that's probably genetically determined;) Really I get the creeps if someone forces me to wear something that has its own smell, grr, my grannie's detergent is the worst... either way that's probably my shadow and if you want to share your story about detergents: Please review, I live for those and if you make me laugh, I'll be more inclined to update, cause I'm a bit sulky at the moment :(**

**Love ya all!**


	4. Chapter 3 Of Robots and Lollies

**A/N: So what did I promise you? :D here's the next chapter, the beta issue resolved itself and while this one is still uncorrected (so bear with me and my mistakes, I promise, I'll try to get better, but writing in english is for me like drawing with a really thick pair of gloves on my hands, it's a bit indirect,and even though I learned a lot about english culture and slang through media, it feels at times like I'm mixing my school Oxford english, together with a tad American english (because we kept mixing literature in school;) and a lot of german expressions, anyway I'll quit rambling because here comes the important stuff:**

**IMPORTANT!**

**1) Here comes the part where translation becomes quite difficult. When writing the first chapters, I didn't think about translating it into english, so I didn't consider that. However, at the end of the last chapter, Darcy asked Lizzie not to address him formally when they meet in private and while Lizzie accepted the offer, she refused him the same favour, so he still calls her Miss Bennet.**

**Anyway: In German as in French there is a different form of address formally/informally which is evident in the pronoun (remember in french it's tu/vous in german du/Sie). A lot of english/german translations fail at this point because while in english only the form of address changes (Lizzie or Miss Bennet) it's more evident in german because of the pronoun. So in this story it's kind of a running gag that he has to address her formally all the time while her way of addressing changes depending on the situation and it characterizes their relationship indirectly all of the time. This kind of gets lost in the translation because she STILL calls him "professor" a lot, so you have to keep in mind, the difference in address until the point where she allows him to call her differently:) If you have any suggestions to make this fact more prominent (because I'm pretty sure, you're more adept at english than I am) tell me!**

**2) To understand this chapter a bit better (and it wouldn't do not to know what Lizzie and Darcy are arguing about:) I advise you to listen to Regina Spektors "Samson" and also to "School is out" even though that's not that important.**

**3) I put in the title of an album somewhere in the dialogues of this chapter, I really like the band and that album especially, if you get it, I'll think about a reward ;) take it as a challenge!**

**Anyway: "Samson" is on the surface about the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, they were a couple and he was known for his physical strenght, in order to kill him they ordered Delilah to find about its source, which was his hair. So she betrayed him and cut it one night, which made him lose all his strenght and he was a slave to his enemies until his hair grew back and he killed them all, so you see, not a pleasant story. They're also different analyses but nothing's for sure and it's all very debatable, so perfect material;)  
**

**END IMPORTANT!**

**Soundtrack: Regina Spektor - Samson (Lyrics in Italics, NOT MINE!) and School is Out**

**Disclaimer: Duh, I'm studying Psychology for Fudge's sake, I probably wouldn't do that, if I was Jane Austen, would I?**

* * *

**Chapter 3: Of Robots and Lollies with Lemon Flavour **

The first thing she heard, when she drifted back to consciousness, was the music.

For a moment she was tempted to yell at Charlotte through the thin wall of their apartment to shut her fucking radio up, until it occurred to her that the music flowing into the room didn't really match Charlotte's typical repertoire.

It was piano music.

Lizzie groaned, trying to somehow process the newly gained information, when she suddenly noticed that she wasn't in her own apartment and that it was therefore extremely absurd, not to mention pointless to blame Charlotte for the music.

Extremely pointless in fact.

She remembered her discussion with Darcy from last night, even the memory made her groan with annoyance and turn over in those smooth silk sheets.

Wait a moment... silk sheets?

Tentatively Lizzie opened one eye and discovered to her utter astonishment that she'd apparently slept in between light blue silk sheets.

Okay that definitely crossed out the possibility of being somewhere in her own apartment. Lizzie couldn't remember ever having bought silk sheets in her entire life (she thought them as silly as see-through lace bras).

On the other hand the colour assured her that she was in fact not in some guy's bedroom, which was a slight consolation and another look under the ridiculously soft blanket confirmed that she was still, thank goodness, wearing her T-Shirt and undergarments.

Now a voice started to accompany the piano music, Lizzie sat up abruptly and noticed that she was a) apparently in one of Jane and Charlie's guest rooms and that b) she knew that song.

On a stool next to the queen-sized bed she found her clothing from yesterday neatly folded and she put it on hastily before making her way to the living room/kitchen area, which seemed to be the source of the softly flowing music.

She turned around the corner and nearly jumped back, when she saw who was occupying the breakfast table.

"Good morning", said Darcy stiffly, when catching sight of her and looked up from his newspaper. _The Independent, _surprise, surprise!

"Morning", Lizzie muttered, grateful for being quick-witted enough to have put on some decent clothing before venturing out of the bedroom, even though she would have liked to see the look on the professor's face if she'd turned up in T-Shirt and undergarments.

"Where are Jane and Charlie?", she asked and looked around the empty kitchen.

He checked his watch. "Still asleep", he replied, before focusing again on the newspaper in his hand.

If she'd been slightly more awake, she probably would've asked him if he'd actually attributed that to the time of day, but judging from the way her brain felt like in the middle of her head, she was definitely not awake enough.

Wavering a bit, she stood in the middle of the kitchen, the bright sunlight streaming through the windows, too violent for her taste and wondered if it was too late to go back to bed and pretend this awkward run-in never happened.

Darcy looked up, surprised to see her standing there.

"Coffee?", he asked and gestured towards the coffee pot in front of him. Lizzie thought, she'd probably made an impression of extreme stupidity on him, because he was looking at her with an expression on his face, that could be constructed as concerned if not for the fact that it was Darcy, she faced at the moment.

"Sure", Lizzie said, because she couldn't think of a better reply and she was in dire need of caffeine. She grabbed a cup from the highest shelve of the cupboard – something only 1,80 metre tall giants can come up with: placing the important stuff out of reach for dwarfs like herself – and seated herself opposite Darcy.

"Not a morning person?" Lizzie looked up only to find Darcy staring at her. Self-consciously she wriggled a bit under his intense gaze and pulled her sweatshirt more tightly around her body.

"No", she said and then, _thank goodness_, he broke the eye-contact to get back to his newspaper.

They were silent for a while. Lizzie pulled her knees to her chest, she'd forgotten to put on socks and started humming along the lines of the song that was playing at the moment.

"You know that song?", the professor asked and again she felt his eyes on her.

"Yes", she replied, she wouldn't let him intimidate her and stop singing just for the sake of not satisfying his arrogance.

He was still looking at her and she noticed he wore the same dress shirt as yesterday evening – did he buy those things _en_ _masse_?

She sighed inwardly. "I didn't know Charlie had Regina Spektor on his iPod." Lizzie couldn't believe she hadn't come across it yesterday.

"He doesn't."

Now it was her turn to stare at him. "Care to elaborate?", she asked with a raised eyebrow.

He groaned slightly and sat up. "My iPod", he then said as if it was a kind of big deal to reveal such personal information.

She laughed shortly before burying her nose in her coffee mug. "I never took you for a Regina Spektor fan."

He gazed at her out of those brooding dark eyes and she wondered if she should be afraid right now.

"My sister", he said. Lizzie snorted.

"Believe it or not, professor, but two words are just not enough to make an informative sentence."

He didn't care to reply but folded his newspaper neatly together and she wondered if she'd _finally_ managed to scare him away.

But no such luck, he stayed put and possible or not, his gaze became even more intense. Goodness, they should recruit him for the X-Men-team, he could replace that funny guy with the sun glasses.

"She copied the playlist on my iPod and believe it or not, Miss Bennet, I'm thoroughly enjoying the music."

Instead of raising her hands in defeat and surrender, like he probably wished her to, she just grinned.

"_School is out_?", she asked, offering some kind of truce.

He nodded and seemed to relax a bit. "_Samson_ is her favourite song."

Lizzie nodded in agreement, even though she felt like one of those figures, you could buy of baseball players, whose heads always dangled forth and back.

"Yeah...", she said slowly. "That song brought me to the musician."

Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow. "How so?", he asked while reaching for his mug.

"I did some research on a paper about the psychological aspects of cancer treatment, among other things it was also about how relatives cope with death and the suffering of a beloved person and the interactive process that takes place between the sufferer and the witness."

"So you think the song is about cancer?" He raised his chin and the sun streaming in through the windows painted his profile in heavy contrasts.

He was really good-looking, she thought, in a dark and mysterious kind of way. His nose was slightly askew and she wondered if someone had broken it.

_Why does that not surprise me?_

Suddenly Lizzie noticed that she was now the one staring and that he still seemed to be waiting for an answer.

"Of course", she replied, irritated by the fact that his looks could distract her so.

"And what about the biblical story of Delilah and Samson? It could also be about her apparent betrayal, only told from another perspective. She says, history forgot about them and that the bible didn't mention them, which could be an indicator that Delilah didn't actually betray Samson, but that it was consensual."

She raised an eyebrow, she'd never heard him talk so much at once and he held one of her lectures for fuck's sake.

"For someone claiming it to be his sister's favourite song, you know an awful lot about its background", she declared teasingly.

"So you agree with me?", he asked, way too arrogant for her taste.

"No", she replied and the taunting smile again flickered across her lips.

"And why ever not?"

"Because I think it's more of a metaphor", she explained and sipped on her coffee.

"In how far?"

"I think, she wants to say that nobody can tell from the outside how a relationship works. People judge, put the blame on somebody and possibly forget the crucial part of the story. History is told by the winners not the ones who loose and nobody is just a secondary character in someone else's story, placed there to fill in the role of the evil one."

She shuddered and his eyes seemed to take in every single motion.

"People are not bad, because their choices are bad, we're more than our surface reveals and as unfair as it is to give someone the role of the villain, because of his actions, it is even more unfair to call someone the victim, just because he or she couldn't fight back. It does not make them an innocent."

She shook her head, twirling a curl between her fingers.

In the song, he seems to be the strong one of the two, he tells her she did it right cutting his hair and he is the one to kiss her. He is not a victim even if he dies in the end."

Lost in thought she stared out of the window for a moment, before her face brightened up considerably.

"Anyway, she said as much in an interview, that it was about a friend of her who died because of cancer." She shrugged and missed the sudden smile on Darcy's lips.

"And did that information influence the way you evaluated the song, Miss Bennet?"

She glanced at him. "No", she said, brow furrowed. "In my opinion, the part, which says: _"Samson went back to bed; not much hair left on his head; he ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed", _makes the point pretty clear."

He nodded. "But perhaps you were prejudiced because you came across that song in the middle of your research about cancer."

She sat up, bringing the mug a bit too loud back down on the surface of the wooden table, a discord, that seemed to completely change the atmosphere in the room and she she looked at him with bright, flaring eyes.

"So you think my interpretation is based on _Anchoring_?!"

"Possibly", he replied tersely. She was on the verge of saying something decidedly _rude_, abusing not only his intellect, his arrogance but also some physical attributes, which were _clearly_ off limits, considering he was her professor, when the sound of feet shuffling over floor retrieved her from the depths of Darcy's eyes.

"Good morning!", Jane cried out happily, clad in jeans and a white tank-top, an air of sunshine and rainbows surrounding her.

Lizzie, who'd always believed her sister to be some kind of Disney-princess, just closed her eyes against the bright exuberance and Darcy, who seemed to be as blinded by her sister's cheerfulness hid himself behind his newspaper, taking his coffee mug with him in his refuge.

Only Charlie, who'd followed Jane into the kitchen like a long lost puppy stared in awe at this miracle creature in front of him, as if she'd suddenly appeared out of some pink, sparkling haze.

"Who wants breakfast?", she asked and practically _danced_ towards the fridge. Charlie answered in the affirmative and got over to help her, while Darcy's negative answer was announced by the rustling of the newspaper pages.

"Lizzie?", Jane asked, appearing with a handful of fruits and a carton of milk from behind the door of the fridge.

Lizzie raised her mug and with a final glare towards Darcy, of whom only his hands were left as a reminder of his physical presence, she created as much distance between the two of them as possible.

"Do you've got some cereal here?", she asked her sister and tried to catch a glimpse of the fridge's contents. Jane laughed and opened a cupboard several inches above Lizzie's head and the reaching area of her hands for that matter.

"Hey, you can't show me Choco Crispies and then deny me my favourite meal!", she bristled at the obvious unfairness and pouted, arms crossed defiantly in front of her chest, when her attempts at reaching the carton through jumping turned out fruitless.

"Give me two seconds and some access to the shelve and I'll get them for you, sweetie", Jane offered with an amused smile while watching her younger sister.

"Grr", Lizzie made. "Tall people are unfair." She heard Charlie chuckling into his cornflakes – he went for the "no sugar, no fun" – cereal alternative, something Lizzie would never, never allow anywhere near her breakfast, you could just as well eat sand for that matter.

"I think you're in the minority right now", he muttered, obviously amused by the glances, Lizzie threw those shelves.

She grabbed the milk and filled her bowl. "Technically Jane doesn't count. Believe it or not, but we were of the same size until she reached the glorious age of sixteen."

Jane laughed and took a seat next to Charlie at the kitchen counter. "True, people always thought we were twins because of that."

"Sounds cute", Charlie whispered in Jane's ear, who blushed a delicate shade of pink. Lizzie had to suppress her gag reflex when looking at this we're-just-dripping-happiness-ridiculously-giddy-couple and restricted herself to a spoon full of milk and cereal as a mean of compensation.

"But you're not at all alike", Darcy interjected, who apparently had crawled out of his hole behind the newspaper.

Lizzie grinned, while making noises with the spoon against the porcelain. "You said as much yesterday, Darcy. No need to repeat yourself." He looked at her slightly confused, but she kept eating her cornflakes and didn't care to elaborate.

"You're aware that this...", he looked at the chocolate flakes, that were swimming in a sea of milk, with distaste, "...stuff... consists of ninety percent sugar and flavour enhancer, aren't you?"

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "I thought you teach ethics, not nutritional science."

He observed her over the rim of his newspaper. "And you are studying medicine, you should know what these ingredients do to your body."

She arched an eyebrow. "Because coffee without any substantial breakfast is _so_ much healthier?"

She could hear Charlie laughing again in his cereal bow. "Uh, she got you, Darcy, old man."

Jane looked equally amused from one to the other, while cutting fruits and mixing them with oat flakes. Lizzie risked rolling her eyes again. As much as she rejoiced in setting him straight, the professor seriously got on her nerves.

"She didn't, Bingley", Darcy replied icily and turned a page.

"So, pray tell me, how do you call it, Darcy, when you're crushingly defeated?", Lizzie cried out, gesticulating wildly with the spoon in her hand, a wide grin on her face.

"Wilful misunderstanding", he retorted tersely, without looking up.

"Oh, you hurt me!" She pressed a hand on that part of her chest, where she knew (thanks to an awful lot of anatomy classes as a freshman) the heart was actually located and dramatically fell back in her chair, tearing Darcy for at least a moment away from his newspaper and forcing him to look up and take in the show in front of him.

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you always this theatrical, Miss Bennet?", he asked, while she peeped under her lashes over to her audience to see their reaction – Jane and Charlie had followed the show with great amusement.

"Lizzie has always been that way", Jane interjected quickly, as if she'd seen her sisters gaze. "I still remember one day, she came home from school, fell onto the sofa and declared vociferously in front of Mom and her crocheting club that she was going to die."

"Oh", came out of Charlie's mouth and he nearly dropped the spoon. "What happened?"

"As it turned out, Mr Hammond from the sweet shop had decided to quit selling Skittles, because he read about some of its apparently dangerous ingredients."

Lizzie snorted while Charlie started laughing. "That was all?"

"Hey, that was pretty bad!", Lizzie interjected, slightly offended and sat up straight.

"Yeah", Jane laughed. "And the faces of those ladies were absolutely priceless, they all thought she was really going to die and asked Mom if she had cancer or something like that. Our poor mother had no idea what to do..."

"Oh I know what she did", Lizzie murmured and rubbed her left ear absent-mindedly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Darcy had caught the motion and hastily dropped her hand.

"And what happened then?", Charlie desired to know, watching his laughing angel closely.

"Oh Dad went grocery shopping with Lizzie and they bought a month's ration of Skittles."

"And lollies with lemon flavour!", Lizzie added, swaying her spoon through the air. "I still remember that..."

"Yeah and I remember you having two big holes in your teeth next time we visited the dentist", Jane retorted good-naturedly. Lizzie grimaced. "Must have blocked that out."

"Is that the reason why you're studying medicine, Lizzie?", Charlie asked. "So that you can become a dentist and help others to eat lollies with lemon flavour?"

Lizzie shook her head vehemently. "Fuck no!", she exclaimed and looked horrified at her sister's boyfriend.

"Lizzie is afraid of dentists", Jane prompted, while Charlie helplessly looked from one Bennet-sister to the other. "She thinks, they're part of some huge conspiracy and want to turn all of us into lifeless robots."

"Hey, have you ever seen the people at a dentist's surgery?", she asked with a sullen expression on her face.

Charlie leaned in, an amused smile playing on his lips. "Just for the sake of it, I'm going to say: No, I haven't." He cocked his head. "What do the people in a dentist's surgery look like, Lizzie?"

She also cocked her head, looked from Jane to Charlie before a smile appeared on her face and lit up the green in her eyes. "Like Darcy", she exclaimed, before she started laughing in her bowl of cereal.

The professor looked up from his newspaper a tad bewildered, when not only Lizzie but also Jane and Charlie burst out laughing.

"And why do they look like Darcy?", Charlie asked in between two laughing fits and coughed oat flakes, Jane patted him on the back. "Lizzie?"

Lizzie raised an eyebrow, before nodding towards the dark-haired man in their kitchen, who alternately gazed at her or Charlie questioningly, as if asking "Isn't that obvious?".

"Who looks like me?", the professor asked exasperated.

"Robots", Charlie managed to get out with a cough. Darcy's face turned into stone. "Absolutely not."

"Oh, don't worry, Darcy", Lizzie interjected. "You're not looking like one of those who work in a dentist's surgery."

Again he arched an eyebrow. "And why not?"

She grinned. "Because they look happy." He pressed his lips tightly together.

"And I do not?"

Charlie coughed, while trying to suppress another laughing fit and Jane, busy with saving her boyfriend from near suffocation, seemed way too happy for an excuse not to look at Darcy and answer his question.

"Sorry, Darcy", Lizzie answered with a giggle. "But you've got more resemblance with the ones, who leave the surgery afterwards."

"And that would be...?"

"Robots."

He stared at her, while she was busy eating her Choco Crispies, as if he was waiting for her to elaborate her statement. Which she didn't and he hid again behind his newspaper, conveniently at the same time, when Caroline made her entrance, stalking into the kitchen in an air of perfume and self-adulation.

Lizzie glanced at her and her lips quivered, when she noticed that Caroline's outfit was indeed extremely scanty (she wore nothing more than a thin, peach-coloured nightgown under her silk robe, which, including the lace trimming, barely covered her ass) but that her make-up and hair were immaculately done.

"Good morning all together", she greeted and Lizzie grimaced at the sound of her voice – it hadn't improved overnight. Caroline leaned in to kiss Jane and Charlie on the cheek (no bad breath on mornings apparently) and tried the same thing with Darcy. Accidentally or not, Lizzie wasn't sure about that, she only met the newspaper.

But Caroline was not to be put off and leaned in further, showing that underneath that sheer rag of lace, she wore everything but a bra and finally forced Darcy to look at her

"Good morning, William", she whispered and batted her eyelashes. He didn't say anything, but swallowed rather obviously.

"Good morning, Caroline", he finally said and held up his newspaper as some kind of shield. The receiver of this rather reluctant greeting rose from her scandalous position and flashed Lizzie a triumphant smile, before walking over to the kitchen.

Lizzie continued eating in a placid manner, while Caroline's horror-stricken scream echoed throughout the kitchen.

"Charles, you can't be serious! Don't you have anything remotely healthy here?"

"If you're talking about your macrobiotic heap of a breakfast, then no, Caroline", her brother replied calmly. This seemed to horrify Caroline even more, because she just couldn't eat "Nothing" for breakfast, even though Lizzie thought that this was normally exactly her custom.

The blonde sent glances Darcy's way in an attempt to seek his help, but it wasn't the professor to rescue her in her distress but Jane, who offered Caroline a bowl with fruits.

She accepted the offer reluctantly and placed herself and the bowl delicately on the table right in front of Darcy and with her back to Lizzie, who just snorted and escaped the lovely view of Caroline's backside in favour of a better perspective from the kitchen counter.

"Oh William", the blonde breathed, just when Lizzie had placed herself cross-legged on the counter, next to Jane and Charlie, who, well-behaved as they were, sat on their chairs behind it. She saw how the barely clad woman bent over the the edge of the newspaper and tried to feed Darcy some grapes. "Did you already eat something today?"

"Yes, thank you very much, Caroline", he snapped and with a shake of his newspaper, he whisked away the perfectly manicured hand together with the declined fruit.

Lizzie attempted to say something but caught Charlie's warning glance out of the corner of her eye and refused to disturb the scene in front of them.

Darcy's obvious dismissal of her attentions did nothing to dampen Caroline's spirit. With her bare feet she traced the curve of his leg up to his knee and further up his thigh. She leaned in lasciviously, hoping to catch the professor's eye while her feet travelled further north.

Darcy's only reaction consisted of discretely scooting away with his chair, so suddenly that Caroline _nearly_ lost her balance and fell over and head first onto the floor.

But fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the way one judged concussions and shoulder dislocations) the blonde rearranged herself, truly discomposed this time and the faces of Lizzie and Charlie, who nearly burst with laughter, angered her even further.

"Oh Eliza!", she cried out, a cat like grin on her face (she really looked like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland), while Jane fed Charlie pieces of tangerines to keep him from laughing, which brought the poor guy again on the brink of suffocation.

"Yes, _Carol_", Lizzie replied, trying to mimic the professor's way of talking and looked up from her bowl of cereal.

"That guy at the party yesterday... the one you danced with so... _intimately_...", she emphasized the word and was accompanied by a rustle of the newspaper. Seemed like Darcy was still alive. "Who was that?"

"A Robot", was Lizzie's sole answer before putting another spoonful of cereal in her mouth. She faintly remembered the guy, Caroline was talking about, he'd brought her a lot of drinks and talked about his absolutely _wonderful_ profession.

"Oh Lizzie don't say that!", Jane interjected, after saving Charlie effectively from a rather unpleasant death. "You can't just go around and call everybody a robot!"

"You mean _randomly_?", she quipped, her eyes sparkling before turning serious again. "But it's true for him. He owns a dentist's surgery in the city centre."

"Which one of your friends is that again, Charles?", Caroline asked, obviously thrilled to have found a topic unpleasant to _Eliza_.

"Jimmy", her brother replied. "He has taken over his Dad's practice last year."

"Oh, Jimmy, of course! Pray, Eliza, did you have a good time?" Her eyes were brimming with glee.

"One can put it that way", Lizzie deadpanned. "He wanted to show me his little Jimmy."

This statement was accompanied with a horrified gasp from Jane, a similar sound from Charlie and a sudden cough behind the newspaper.

Caroline however seemed to practically burst with excitement. "Aaaand?", she asked and leaned in conspiratorially, unintentionally revealing deep insights into her cleavage, which made Jane and Charlie blush simultaneously.

But Lizzie just grinned and pointed into the air with her spoon. "See, Caroline, the thing is, that I'm not really interested in "little"."

This effectively shut up the whole room and even the man behind the newspaper, who, if she was not mistaken, held the pages a little _too_ tightly.

Not that it mattered to her anyway.

"Oh", was all that came out of Caroline's mouth, which was stained with cherry red lipstick – _who the hell wears lipstick before breakfast? _\- and frozen in the motion, before she composed herself and a sarcastic smile grazed her features.

"I never thought you to be someone like... _that_, Eliza."

Lizzie reciprocated the grin in the same manner and pointed at Caroline's nightgown.

"Oh I think you pretty much matched my expectations, Carol."

The grin on the blonde's face faltered a little and it was only due to Jane's attempts at polite conversation that the breakfast didn't end in icy silence.

"What's planned for today, Lizzie?", Charlie asked, when everybody had finished eating and Lizzie was ready to depart. Darcy still hid behind his newspaper, neither caring about washing up nor about Caroline's endless chattering.

"Working", Lizzie replied and put her bowl into the dish washer. "I have to finish my Ethics-essay and a friend of mine is doing a psychological study with an EEG and she asked me to help her."

"What a pity", Charles replied. "We'd hoped you had time to go shopping for furniture with us after Jane's job interview. Even Darcy is coming."

She waved it aside, grateful for the excuse not to spend her day with robot 1 and robot 2. "I'm sorry Charles, but I've got a lot to do for Uni and Charlotte is now for more than 24 hours alone and that is always dangerous."

"Oh, it can't be that much surely", Charlie retorted while putting some spoons in the dishwasher before closing it and pressing start.

"It is", she simply said. "Ask your friend over there." She pointed at Darcy.

"_He_ dumbed all that work on you?", Charlie asked surprised before turning around to Darcy. "Hey, old man, can't you make an exception for her?"

The professor appeared rather indignantly from behind his newspaper, while effectively managing to stay out of Caroline's way, whose head dangled rather dangerously forth and back. "I'm sorry to say, Bingley, but Tuesday is deadline. If Miss Bennet hadn't been procrastinating so far, she wouldn't find herself in this situation now."

"Darcy, don't be such an-", Charlie started, but Lizzie cut him off. "Hey, professor, the thing I did in the meantime...", she raised her chin provocatively, "It's called a social life."

Charlie laughed and Lizzie patted him encouragingly on the back. "Don't you worry, Charlie, it's useless to try and get him to take a breath like we mere mortals do." She winked and Charlie laughed delightedly.

She turned around to Jane and hugged her tightly. "See you soon, Janie. Promise to call me as soon as you're out of that job interview, okay?"

Her sister nodded in affirmation and Lizzie pressed a kiss on her cheek before grabbing her bag on her way to the door. But before leaving she turned around one last time, as if she'd forgotten something and with a look to Jane and a nod towards the professor, who was watching her with dark eyes and a scowl, she laughed with a twinkle in her eye: "Definetely Type 2, Janie", before she disappeared.

* * *

**A/N: Wasn't that fun? I really like this chapter, especially because of Caroline;) Don't worry there will be a lot of her, even though the next three chapters will focus more on Craig, Charlotte and ... Anne (I love Anne;), number 5 will be a bit different in tone but it will explain the africa-thing;)  
**

**The next one should be up in a few days, as always please REVIEW! and find the album reference;) love ya all!**


	5. Chapter 4 Chinese

**A/N: Okay, I'm still overwhelmed by the really, really positive feedback I received since posting this story, so I'll take the time to thank all those people who read, reviewed, followed or favourited this story, you're awesome!;)**

**To answer some questions: **

**Amy: The question about "type 2" is answered at the end of this chapter;) thank you a lot for your suggestions, I'll keep it in mind;)**

**cutelilmochi: Darcy eavesdropping makes all the fun in the last chapter;) but he's not bipolar, only a bit arrogant;) and you're right about the being friends part, especially because Lizzie is not one to open up easily, her heart and mind are like fort knox or something, it'll do for a lot of misunderstanding;)**

**dizzy-lizzy60: that's for you to find out;)**

**The Rabbit: Sadly not, albeit it's a good guess;)**

**So last time's album reference was "The Sufferer and The Witness" by Rise Against (it's in the part where Lizzie talks about her research paper;) the album is great by the way.**

**So we're reaching the AU part, this is a preparation for the next chapter, which should be up in the next few days, and yay, we're meeting Craig and Charlotte (you're going to find out about the matches and why Lizzie confiscated them;)**

**Soundtrack: The Manic - Amarante **

**Disclaimer: Jane Austen was on this years calendar about strong women, so I would REALLY like to be her;) Sadly, I'm not...**

* * *

**Chapter 4: Chinese solves everything... I promise!**

Stairs were the lemons in Lizzie's life.

Already as a three-year old with a head of frizzy curls, freckles and bruised knees she'd stood on top of the staircase at home with the creaky wooden boards, staring questioningly down the crooked steps, while chewing on a fingernail.

It wasn't because the purpose of a staircase didn't make sense to her, even at three years of age she was bright enough to understand the principle of connecting two levels, even though she probably would've phrased it differently.

No, there was something about these steps, that disturbed her greatly.

Perhaps it was the way her father always pounded up the stairs, so loud that it could be heard throughout the house, perhaps it was the hasty up and down scurrying of her mother, when she was running through the house like a headless chicken, perhaps it was even Jane's angelic grace, with which she moved over the steps, Little Lizzie wasn't so sure about that, but something about these steps and the way the other members of her family were using them bothered her immensely.

So if life gives you lemons,you make lemonade out of them. Or in Lizzie's case: some kind of bouncing competition about the many ways you can jump down a staircase – she accomplished sixty-seven, until Mama Bennet sent her to her room to "stop this madness", as she put it.

But she hadn't stopped. Until this day she jumped or bounced or danced down every staircase, she encountered, even if it just meant skipping the last three to five steps of a landing – Lizzie Bennet jumped.

This behaviour earned her a lot of curious glances and comments over the years, including many nervous fits from her mother, but she never ceased doing so – something about staircases irked her and that was her way of conquering them.

So when on this one sunny Saturday morning she finally closed the front door to Charlie's apartment with a relieved sigh and saw the spacious stairwell with the giant windows and broad steps, she just couldn't stop smiling.

It started with an innocent little hop, just one step but she landed safely on one foot and the smile on her face grew even wider. Then two steps at the same time, then backwards the last three of the landing and the other four storeys followed suit in the same manner until she finally stepped out and into the bright October sun, where Craig's car was waiting for her.

She was jolly glad, when she turned around the key and the motor actually started working, even though she would have liked to see Darcy's face, when the little junker was still there at his departure.

The car wheezed and growled when she pressed the gas pedal and slowly pulled out into the traffic and the chaos, that was London's city centre.

She loved the city, loved it since the first time she'd stranded here at age eighteen. She loved the old houses, the people in the tube and that on every second corner there was a park or a coffee shop to be found.

Her parents disliked the city and especially her father, who detested crowds and liked to hole himself up in his study, never set foot here or anywhere else, where the population exceeded the one in his study, including Meryton.

Sometimes she asked herself if that was the reason she'd chosen the the most populous city in the European Union as her home, but those moments passed as soon as they came, just the blink of an eye, if you brushed them aside with a laugh.

It nearly took an hour in this traffic chaos to find back to the apartment, she shared with Charlotte, but she just laughed while drumming with her hands on the steering wheel just in time to the music, let the sunlight dance on her skin and gave the guy in the black BMW the finger, when he cut her at the crossroad.

It was nearing midday when she finally reached home, _Philip's_ was still closed and the dark windows gazed like tiredly squinted eyes at the street in front of them.

Craig was already waiting for her with his arms crossed in front of his chest, clad in boxers with little hearts printed on the cotton and a Superman-T-Shirt, standing on the top of the steps leading to the front door of the apartment building, a pair of flip-flops on his feet to save them from the cold stone.

Lizzie smiled brightly, when she saw him and stopped right in front of him. He looked down on her, an eyebrow raised, the blonde curls falling in his face or standing up around his head like some kind of halo.

"Hi", she said, still beaming and hid the keys to the car behind her back. "What a beautiful day, don't you think, Craig?"

"Lizzie", he growled.

"And so sunny! Honestly, you wouldn't think it to be October already! Did you look at the thermometer today? Feels like spring to me... Look!", she lifted one arm. "I'm only wearing a T-Shirt under the sweatshirt and these leggings are not exactly thick and still it's so warm that I..."

"Lizzie..."

"And not a cloud to be seen! Really, Craig, when was the last time that happened? We definitely need to have a picnic today, the weather is just _perfect_, or we could all go to Philip's later today, it's Cocktail-evening and Marley said, it'll be awesome..."

"Lizzie!" This time he nearly bellowed her name and she ceased talking but the grin on her face grew even wider.

"Yes, Craig?"

"Where are my keys?" He squinted his eyes so that the green of the iris was nearly undetectable.

"Your keys?", she asked, as if he'd just said something completely absurd.

"Yes, my keys. For my car, Lizzie. Silver, black a Donald-Duck-pendant. Have you seen them, accidentally of course?"

"Hmm", Lizzie said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "Donald-Duck-pendant you say? I've seen those... I think they sell them at Piccadilly Circus, if you want to buy one of them... but honestly, Craig... Donald-Duck? Isn't Mickey Mouse way more awesome? Or Minnie? Goofy? Pluto? I'm more a fan of Disney-princesses myself, Belle and Mulan are great, Cinderella less but still better than Sleeping Beauty with..."

"Lizzie Bennet, have you -"

"- seen your keys? Hmm... Have you seen Charlotte today? Is she still alive? She's now alone for 24 hours and you know that can be dangerous... I mean, did you turn on the smoke detector? Just in case, you never know what she's up to and if she gets into her head to bake some cookies..."

"Lizzie, my keys, my car..."

"Oh, you mean these?" With a mock surprised expression on her face she held up the bunch of keys.

"Fuck, of course, Lizzie. What do you think am I talking about the whole time?" He made attempts to snatch the keys from her, but she was faster and retreated a step or two, shaking her head disapprovingly.

"That's not the way it works, Craig." She rattled the keys in front of his face.

"Lizzie, give me my keys this moment! You can't just kidnap my car, if you so please and-" He made another move but she was again faster.

"Kidnap? What are you talking about? I rang the bell, politely as I am and asked pleasantly, mind you, and you gave them to me!"

"I was stoned, Lizzie and you knew that!" He was now towering over her dangerously and even though Craig was at least two heads taller than her and twice her weight., Lizzie was evidently faster and not in the least intimidated.

"I told you time and time again that you should keep your fingers away from that shit, Craig. Don't make me accountable if you're certifiably insane!"

He looked at her, brow furrowed while grasping like a clumsy bear with his claws for the keys in her hand. "Just give me the keys, Lizzie!"

"How's Charlotte?" She rattled with the keys, but he just growled instead of answering. "How is Charlotte, Craig?"

"She's alive", he replied while trying to catch her around the waist, but she escaped him again.

"Craig..."

"She's talking to her Mom on the phone and cursing in Spanish so loudly that I can hear her in my room." He sighed. "Can I get my keys now?"

Lizzie furrowed her brow. "She's cursing, you say?"

"Fuck, yes!" He groaned and again tried to snatch the keys away but she just held them out of his reach.

Another groan. "God dammit, Lizzie! Give me my keys!"

She looked at him, a grin spreading on her face. "God?", she asked, an eyebrow raised. "I thought you didn't believe in a pathetic excuse for opium, Craig."

"The reason I'm cursing", he replied and rolled his eyes. "Fuck, Lizzie, what do you want?"

She let the bunch of keys dance around her index finger. "Chinese", she then said with a broad grin.

"Chinese?" He stopped dead in his tracks, mouth agape.

"Chinese."

"No way." He crossed his arms in front of his chest. "We're not going to drive around London to some Chinese restaurant in order to appease your appetite. Honestly, Lizzie, have you ever heard about this thing called breakfast? It's tasty, nourishing and you eat it in the morning."

"Don't you dare lecture me about healthy eating", she retorted before shaking her head dismissively and holding up the keys as some kind of warning. "We need some Chinese food to get Charlotte back under the living, if she starts cursing, that's the beginning of the end."

"Dramatic much?" He raised an eyebrow but the dignity he tried to gain with the gesture was lost at the sight of the printed hearts on his pants.

"Move, Craig, before she sets the apartment on fire."

"I'm not going anywhere", the guy in the Superman-T-Shirt declared. "And you're going to give me my keys back or else-"

"Or else what?" She balanced the thin ring of metal, that held the keys together, on the tip of her index finger, dangling it in close proximity over the grate, which marked the entrance to London's canal system.

"Empty threats are not really your thing, are they?"

"You wouldn't dare", Craig managed to get out and his eyes travelled from Lizzie's sparkling ones to the keys in her hand and then down to the grate.

"It's not my car", Lizzie replied nonchalantly and the dangling of the keys grew a bit more intense. "Chinese?"

"Chinese", Craig relented with a clearly audible swallow.

* * *

She let him drive the car. Partly because he would've screamed at every crossroad in horror, when she drove too fast around the corner (honestly, there were no worse fellow passengers than those, who applied invisible brakes and cringed whenever she revved the engine) and partly because he asked her to (even though begging would be more fitting).

Lizzie opened the window, letting in the sun and the fresh air despite Craig's protests, he was still clad only in his T-Shirt and boxers and she put her feet, tucked in heavy black boots, on the dashboard, while singing loudly along with the music (the radio was the only thing functioning accordingly in Craig's car).

"Care to explain, why exactly we need Chinese food in order to..." He tried to find words to express their mission.

"...reanimate Charlotte?", Lizzie prompted, while standing in the waiting queue at the China-restaurant, breathing in the scent of soy-sauce and grilled vegetables, that hung in the air.

"Really? Reanimate?", Craig asked and looked doubtfully down at Lizzie, who even in her boots with the thick sole barely reached the height of his elbow.

"Her mother is sucking the life out of her", Lizzie explained darkly. "That's why we need the food."

"But Charlotte's part Spanish!"

Lizzie just shrugged. "That's the reason for the Chinese food. If I offer her tapas, she'll probably collapse. Chinese was the first thing that sprung to mind, which is not going to remind her of her mother."

"You're aware of the fact that there are China-restaurants in Spain, right?", Craig asked, an eyebrow raised. He drew a lot of attention with the red hearts printed on his boxer briefs, especially in a room that consisted fifty-fifty of cheap plastic tables and waving golden cats.

"Yes, but it's the same with Ireland", she retorted. "And you wouldn't necessarily associate MrWongs with your home country, would you?"

"God, curse the day they taught you that word, Lizzie!", Craig groaned.

"13th of September, fifth grade, Ms Brixton, who tried to broaden our horizon", Lizzie replied while placing her order. She pitied the guy with the white chef's hat, especially when he totally mixed up the orders.

"The day the world as we knew it ended", Craig said ominously while taking in one of the waving cats, that sat next to the cash register.

"No, that was the day, I started talking." She paid the bill and received a deliciously smelling plastic bag with Styrofoam packages full of food. There was nothing better than in soy sauce drowned vegetables to make a day.

"That was the first sign." Craig snorted, while his flip-flops squeaked across the floor when they left the shop and Lizzie had to suppress a laughter at the sight of the flowing hearts.

They quarrelled throughout the ride home and were still engaged in "Do too! - Did not!"-banter, although the smell of grilled chicken and soy sauce did a lot to calm their nerves.

It had always been that way between them. Craig had been part of their group since the day, Lizzie and Charlotte had moved into the apartment next to his. He was living alone, because he scared off most of his flatmates in the first two weeks and after the obligatory "Turn the fucking music down!" and "Do you really have to smoke _that_ stuff on the balcony?" , he became some kind of third unofficial flatmate.

He came over for dinner most nights (they'd discovered early enough in their acquaintance that Lizzie and Charlotte were probably the better cooks, as long as Charlotte didn't set the kitchen on fire) and he helped fixing their IT-stuff (he studied informatics and was a genius when it came to collapsing laptops). He also always had some free bed space, if one of them needed refuge to escape the guys the other one had brought home for the night and he didn't even bat an eyelash if one of them was banging on his door at three in the morning, because they just couldn't find their keys in their drunken stupor.

Lizzie had never seen much of his friends, the majority of his social life played out on the internet, if they didn't force him to go out and leave his nest for at least an evening to engage in verbal communication.

Lizzie suspected that he was gay, but he never stated something clearly and she thought, it wasn't her place to ask.

"I swear if you weren't so tiny, I'd probably pass out right now!", Craig gasped, while carrying Lizzie piggy-back up the stairs and down the hallway to their separate apartments. She'd forced him to do so and after an incredulous "Who the hell do you think I am?" from his side, she'd just poked a finger against his chest and said "Superman". Obviously, this had ruffled his ego.

They hadn't even reached the front door of Lizzie's and Charlotte's apartment, when they could hear their flatmate's voice cursing loudly in Spanish.

„¡Madre mía, estás loco! ¡Silencio, por favor! ¡Silencio!", it reverberated throughout the hallway and Lizzie's grip on the plastic bag with the Chinese-food intensified.

"We're going to open that door now", she whispered in Craig's ear. "So brace yourself!"

Craig nodded in silent agreement and the fingers of his right hand turned around the key, while Lizzie held up the bag of food like some kind of weapon.

„¡Por dios!", it thundered, just when they opened the door and thoroughly shocked, Lizzie and Craig nearly fell backwards into the hallway, but Craig in the last possible minute managed to keep his balance, while reaching for the door frame.

„¡Mierda!", it escaped Charlotte, her phone still pressed against her ear, looking alarmed at the wavering couple in front of her, while her mother's voice could still be heard shrilling through the speakers. "What are you doing here?"

Lizzie grinned, while Craig still fought, gasping for air, for his balance. "Special Delivery!", she cried out excitedly and handed Charlotte the bag, but before the girl could react, Craig started to groan. "Ugh, Lizzie get off me!", he managed to get out and Lizzie obeyed by jumping off Craig's back.

"We brought some food", she explained, dangling the deliciously smelling bag in front of Charlotte's nose, while at the same time taking in her surroundings. Thank Goodness, nothing seemed to have shattered, burned or exploded in her absence.

"Please, tell me that this is exactly what I think it is!", Charlotte exclaimed, phone still in hand and followed Lizzie out of the small kitchen area into the just as small living-room, which was currently owned by an insanely amount of books and papers, only to promptly step into one of the various pots, which were scattered across the floor and with a loud bang and a clash to get some of the piles of books to collapse when she promptly slipped.

"¡Me cago en la mierda!", she hissed while trying to free her foot from the confines of the pot. Craig stumbled into the room and a bit bewildered took in the chaos and Lizzie's amused face.

"Aren't you hungry?", he asked and questioningly held up a stack of plates.

"Of course!", Charlotte spat out behind the curtain of wild dark tresses, that covered her face at the moment. "My feet is just stuck in this fucking-" And exactly at that moment she remembered that her Mom was still on the phone, when said woman began screeching through the speaker.

"Ah, just shut up, Mamá", she snapped. "¡Me cago en la mierda! Can't you just be quiet? I'm not going to go back to Spain and you can't force me!" She slammed her foot, which was still stuck in the pot, Lizzie used to cook her famous Spagetthi Carbonara, on the floor as if to illustrate her point. "I don't care what Papá has to say about that! No and you can take notes, I'm not going to marry that stupid son of Pabló Luego Gonzales – No, I don't care and you can't - ¡Mierda, listen to me for once!" She stood up, foot still caught in the pot and stated pacing around the room, dragging with her the pot, like some kind of acoustical accompaniment.

"Don't you dare calling me ungrateful" _Clang_ . "You demand that I -" _Clang_. "- give up everything I have, just because -" _Clang_. " - you want to have that damned farm!" She stamped her foot angrily and with just that exact amount of force was she able to rid herself of her involuntarily gained shoe made of slightly crusted special steel. The surprise over this achievement made Charlotte loose her balance and step onto a heap of pens, someone (Lizzie) had forgotten there.

„¡Dios mío!", she cried out in pain and hobbled away from other potential sources of harm and then "Fuck!", which didn't seem to please her mother, because the screaming reached new heights of torture.

"No, Mamá, I'm not forgetting my roots. Fuck is a thoroughly common term even in Spanish and - ¡Mierda – that's no reason for you to take me home! Don't you even dare! No, absolutely not... ¡Ni soñarlo! I'm not a little girl anymore! Don't think you could -", she started anew, while Lizzie placidly filled the three plates with rice and vegetables, Craig gave her and answered the growing nervousness in his eyes with a shrug of her shoulders.

In the meantime Charlotte screamed herself into a growing rage. "I don't care what your neighbours will think – No, I don't go to church every Sunday – And _no_, I don't think, I'll go to hell!"

Craig started sweating, he had a problem with witnessing fights, if he was not part of the argument. In attempt to calm him, Lizzie put a hand on his shoulder and walked over to the pacing Charlotte, who dragged a little whirlwind of book pages and old wrapping papers with her in her fury, and thrust the plate with the Chinese food right in front of Charlotte's nose, stopping her in her wild movements, when the scent hit her.

She sighed, blinked at Lizzie, who looked at her with a bright smile on her face and shut her phone with a resigned gesture.

"Chinese?", she asked and the wild expression on her face disappeared.

"Without mushrooms", Lizzie assured her with a grin, that carved dimples in her cheeks.

"But with pineapples", Craig chimed in, obviously relieved that the screaming and also the growing whirlwind had ceased. Some papers where still flowing around in the air, only to sink like fallen leaves to the floor next to Charlotte.

Lizzie sat down next to her friend, cross-legged in front of the couch, Craig did the same and the three of them used the successful rescue measures to prepare a slightly unconventional picnic.

"Now we only need someone to play the guitar", Lizzie mused, her fork held up in the air like a conductor's baton.

"And a bonfire", Charlotte added, head pressed against the sofa cushions, her hair standing up like a bunch of wild arrows, pointing in all directions.

"How do you want to get a bonfire in here?", Craig asked, mouth full of rice and vegetables.

Charlotte grinned a bit mischievously and eyed the small couch table made of wood, which was buried under a myriad of papers and anatomy books.

"Oh no!", Lizzie cried out and raised both hands, including fork and plate, in defence. "Don't you dare get anywhere near that table! Was the toaster last month not enough?"

"The toaster?", Craig asked surprised. "What did you to the poor thing?"

"Charlotte decided last month that she wanted to eat some toast", Lizzie started explaining, while picking up some pieces of carrot.

"Isn't that the normal thing to do?" Craig looked questioningly from one girl to the other. Lizzie snorted.

"You should think so, right?" She shook her head "No, she decided that four o'clock in the morning would be the perfect time for a little breakfast and started rummaging in the kitchen.

"Because it's something you'd never do", Charlotte interjected while chewing on her food.

"I make coffee!", Lizzie retorted and turned back towards Craig. "Anyway, she wanted some toast and until the point where you put in the slices and press start, it all went well, but then she had the sudden idea, the toaster wouldn't work."

"It didn't turn hot!", Charlotte complained indignantly. "I hold my hand over it, but it just wouldn't turn hot!"

"Of course it didn't", Lizzie replied. "You held your hand over the bread bin. Would be one hell of a surprise if that thing was hot."

"I forgot my glasses, okay?", Charlotte admitted albeit reluctantly while tugging on her horn-rimmed-glasses.

Lizzie shook her head in an amused fashion before continuing. "In any case, Charlotte decided to test if the toaster really wasn't working properly and put -"

"Do you know of another way to test it?", Charlotte interjected and Lizzie turned towards her friend, eyes widened incredulously.

"With matches?!", she asked. "Charlotte, you - "

"I couldn't see anything, okay?"

"Wait, did she really-" Craig looked slightly horrified from Lizzie to Charlotte.

"- put matches in the toaster? Yes, she did." Lizzie glanced with a shake of her head over to Charlotte, who was pouting now. "Next thing, I knew, there was a loud bang and Charlotte was screaming, because she'd burned her hand."

"It wasn't that bad", Charlotte mumbled and gazed at her right hand, which was still covered in a thin bandage.

"I nearly called an emergency!", Lizzie retorted. "You were so fucking lucky, Char, that the whole thing didn't explode and kill us all."

"A toaster?", Charlotte asked and raised an eyebrow. "Dramatic much?"

"Oh am I?", Lizzie asked, louder this time. "Am I really? You nearly set us all on fire!" She turned towards Craig. "By the way, the toaster didn't survive."

Craig grinned. "Thought so. Did you attend the funeral?"

"Yes", Lizzie nodded seriously. "We buried him at _Miller&amp;Sons Electronic Scrap_. It was really a touching ceremony. Charlotte did the speeches and I selected the music."

"I can imagine that. _Welcome To The Black Parade_?", he asked with a grin and put another spoonful of food in his mouth.

"Among others. _The End _and _Dead!_ were played, I also wanted to play_ Famous Last Words_, but Charlotte thought it was too dramatic."

Charlotte looked from Lizzie to Craig. "You're aware that this wonderful funeral consisted of Lizzie wearing her black lace outfit, throwing the toaster on the scrapyard on her way to the library and loudly singing highly depressing songs in the tube?"

"Hey, it's called irony!"

"Or hungry for dramatic show effects", Charlotte retorted. "She wore that huge black hat with the veil and the fake flowers."

"Ever heard of the word "style", Char?", Lizzie interjected, while perusing her food for remaining pieces of pineapple.

"You looked like a black widow." Craig snorted at Charlotte's retort and hid the laugh in his food.

"Like I said: Style."

Charlotte just threw her a sceptic glance before picking up the last pieces of food, she'd left on her plate.

"What did your mother want from you?", Craig asked, too fast for Lizzie to elbow him.

Charlotte's now relaxed mien hardened again and she grabbed her knife so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "Persuade me to come back to Spain in order to marry that sexist _moron_ of a son, who'll inherit the farm next to my parents' house." She shook her head and Lizzie threw Craig a warning glare, which left the guy in the Superman-T-Shirt squirming uncomfortably on the floor.

"When I refused, she pulled that card about me being not pretty enough to find someone else to marry and that I spend too much time in Uni to ever attract a decent husband." She sighed and rolled her eyes. Lizzie wanted to protest, but Charlotte blocked her words with a motion of her hand. "I know it's true, Lizzie, no need to lie to me."

Lizzie wanted to protest again, but thought better of it. It was hard to get Charlotte to see things her way, when she'd made decision and she wanted to strangle Mrs Lucas for creating all these inferiority complexes in her daughter.

It was true, Charlotte was no beauty, at least not on first glance. Her wild, black hair was never to be tamed and even after hours of brushing it still looked like she'd just gotten out of bed and the part of her face that was not covered by a curtain of hair, she hid behind those huge glasses.

Ironically, Charlotte was anything but shy and if, in the course of an evening, she pushed her hair out of her face and lost her glasses somewhere, most people were surprised to see her big brown eyes and to hear the dry humour coming from her lips.

Not to mention the fact that Charlotte was the clumsiest person, Lizzie knew, and could manage to get into every possible accident, happening in a two mile radius.

"Sounds like your Mom, Lizzie", Craig remarked, while scratching the leftovers on his plate together.

Lizzie groaned. "And that's the exact reason why these two ladies are never, and I mean never, going to meet each other."

"The distance is certainly a factor in your favour, I suppose", Craig said. "Minimizes every possible chance of interaction."

He gazed out of the window, a far away look in his eyes and Lizzie wondered if he thought about his own family. She wanted to ask him, but let it drop. Family was a sensitive subject for all of them, probably most of all for Craig.

"Hey, what exactly was that text about, you sent me yesterday?", Charlotte asked suddenly, when she'd calmed enough to again participate in the conversation.

"What text are you talking about?", Lizzie asked astonished, because she couldn't remember texting Charlotte yesterday.

"What text?", Charlotte repeated. "Plural, sweetheart. You sent about five or six, all with the same... strange.. text."

"Goodness", Lizzie groaned, thinking about Jimmy, the dentist and his...offer. "What did it say?"

Charlotte giggled. "Always the same._ "Number Two! Fucking Type Two!"_ Oh and here's my favourite:_ "He is a fucking Two, Char, Type Two!"_" She looked at Lizzie expectantly. "Who the hell are you talking about?"

Craig grinned. "Sounds like it's a) a position, I don't know, or b) some kind of rating."

Lizzie sighed, she knew exactly, who these texts were about and it definitely wasn't about some kind of position. At the very least they weren't about dentist-Jimmy and _that_ was a consolation.

"Darcy", she finally mumbled and growled a bit.

"Darcy?", Charlotte cried out surprised. "Our professor?"

Lizzie nodded, her expression grim. "As it seems, Jane forgot to tell me that Charlie's famous best friend teaches ethics at Uni." She shook her head, still a bit overwhelmed by that bit of information and the sheer mass of accidents that had thrown Darcy and her together.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Charlotte nearly jumped in the air in excitement. "And did you-"

"Goodness, _No_, Charlotte!" Thoroughly shocked, Lizzie nearly dropped her plate. "He's our professor!"

Charlotte shrugged. "Who cares? He's hot and you've been together at that party."

"If that's the only criterion you need, to jump into bed with someone...", Craig murmured and was soon the recipient of one Charlotte's poisonous glares.

"We weren't _together_ at that party!", Lizzie practically screamed and only calmed down, when she saw how Craig jerked back at the sound. "Not to mention the fact that he doesn't think me pretty enough to even _tempt_ him to _dance_" She grinned a bit derisively at the thought of Darcy's words.

"He didn't say that?!" Charlotte seemed practically horrified. Craig just chuckled.

"Seems like we all got out inferiority complexes together these days", he remarked but didn't react to the astonished glances of the two girls.

"Anyway, we reached some kind of arrangement", Lizzie explained, while drawing circles in the rice on her plate. "Outside of Uni I may call him Darcy and he won't judge my behaviour in my free-time." She shrugged and proceeded to randomly poke some vegetables.

"And what does he call you?", Charlotte asked smugly.

"Miss Bennet", Lizzie replied. "It was the only alternative, because we are neither sleeping with each other nor are we friends."

"Oh Oh", Charlotte practically sang. "Then we'll know if something about that changes." Lizzie threw her a glare before focusing again on her artwork, the sauce definitely contrasted the white of the rice most becomingly.

"It still does not explain the strange texts", Craig remarked and looked at her expectantly.

Lizzie sighed. "Do you remember when I spoke about two potential types, Charlie's mysterious friend could embody?", she asked Charlotte, who nodded. "He's number Two."

"So rich business-guy with blonde Bimbo and Vodka to open up his mouth?" Lizzie nodded impressed by Charlotte's ability to remember everything. "Except for the Vodka-thing... Darcy doesn't drink."

"He doesn't drink?", both, Craig and Charlotte asked incredulously. She nodded in affirmation. "Not a single drop. Don't ask me why. He just rambled on about potential physical side effects and that _I_, as a med student, should be aware of them." She shook her head. "Arrogant ass, if you ask me."

"Yeah, you mentioned that", Charlotte retorted and laughed before taking a look at the clock on her phone display (there were a lot of missed call signs, but she ignored them all).

"Oh Shit!", she cried out. "¡Mierda, we have to go!" She jumped up and ripped Lizzie's plate, which was still half full, out of her hands. "Anne is going to kill us if we're too late."

Lizzie started protesting, but when she became aware of the time, she relented to Charlotte's wild searching-for-clothes-dance, which ended in a lot of upended drawers.

"What are you going to do at Anne's?", Craig asked, overwhelmed by the sudden chaos.

"She's doing a test execution for her EEG-study about face-recognition and Charlotte and I are helping her so that she can practice.

"Awesome", Craig smiled. "I want to see photos."

Lizzie grinned mischievously. "What do you think Charlotte's searching for?" She pointed at the bag on the kitchen counter. "She just doesn't know I already have the camera."

"You're mean, Lizzie", Craig laughed and started cleaning up after their meal.

"Hmm", she said, while waiting with crossed arms for him to turn back around. "Craig?"

"Yeah?" He looked at her, she smiled sweetly, dimples around her mouth.

"Would you do me a favour?" He looked at her suspiciously. "Only a teeny-tiny one!"

He sighed. "What do you want?"

She beamed. "Can we borrow your car?"

* * *

**A/N: Good Gracious, forgive my bad spanish, I decided to only stick to some expressions, but it was probably very poorly done, I'm sorry and again sorry any other language mistakes, I'm still trying to do my best without betaing;) **

**My Chemical Romance is actually my favourite band, the album The Black Parade is a really great piece of music, albeit very different from Regina Spektor;) **

**So I hope you like Craig and Charlotte, next time we'll do a little trip down memory lane;)**

**As always, reviews are appreciated, very much so!**


	6. Chapter 5 The lost ones

**A/N: So here we go again;) some of you commented on the lack of D&amp;E in the last chapter, I'm sorry but it'll take this one and the next before we get back to those two, but I promise two chapters FULL with them (anyone remebering the Netherfiel ball?) **

**BUT this one is my favourite chapter so far, even though it's without Darcy, it's different...and did I promise it would get darker? it does now. **

**some of you also commented on the many errors I make, there are some issues with betaing at the moment, which mean either delaying updates for an unknown period of time or updating uncorrected versions, I chose the latter, but if one of you is willing to correct my chapters in a more timely manner, I'd appreciate it greatly. I'm always trying to get better, but I fear I make a lot of mistakes, especially in this chapter because of the tenses, I did my best and even worked through my brother's grammar book, because I really, really love this chapter:)**

**to wendywho: I didn't know that song before! but it's funny even though I'm not sure if it's really accurate, Lizzie's not really a teacher's pet (funny expression you english/american people have there;) she's more a pain in the ass than anything else, albeit an intelligent one, keeping Darcy on his toes, but thank you anyway, I love music suggestions (give them to me!)**

**Soundtrack: Bon Iver - RE:Stacks (lyrics in italics)**

**Bon Jovi - Runaway **

**Band of Horses - The Funeral **

**Disclaimer: This one is so AU, I probably don't even need to tell you, I'm not Jane Austen (which is plainly obvious because I curse, a lot) **

* * *

**Chapter 5: The lost ones**

She met Anne on her first day in London five years ago.

It was unplanned. She remembered having packed her suitcase in the lasting drunken stupor from prom, throwing money, a passport and two chocolate bars into her bag before taking the next train to London that same night. Everything that happened after that was sequence of smells and sounds and the droning in her head, which did not lessen until she stood on platform 3 at King's Cross in Jane's High Heels and a red silk-dress, which was more a statement than anything else, staring at the enormous Welcome-to-London-sign, which greeted the travellers.

She'd forgotten to leave a message and the knowledge left a bitter, metallic taste on her tongue, her mobile phone had gotten lost somewhere on the way between school and Longbourn, when she'd stumbled home in those murderous shoes, so that was also not an option.

Lizzie had no idea how long she stood there, silent, focused on this one sign, which greeted her in such cheerful colours and wondering whether or not the artist had been on LSD when creating that piece.

She still thought so every time she was at King's Cross.

She walked away from the platform and to the central area of the train station, where all the shops blinked and sparkled and the destination boards lit up with the names of places so far away. Lizzie kept walking, blocking out the pain in her feet, wondering whether or not she wanted some coffee and whether or not her stomach was still there to appreciate it.

She must have been walking the circle from the destination boards to the coffee shop and back to platform 3 for nearly an eternity, but it took her a while before she became aware of the girl with the short brown hair, who seemed to observe her.

At first she just shrugged it off, thinking that her rather unusual outfit was the cause for the girl's obvious interest and continued her mindless wandering through the endless throng of travellers.

But the next time Lizzie stopped at the destination boards, the girl was still sitting there on the bench next to an agitatedly talking woman in a grey business-outfit, a small book in her hand, scribbling something or other down, while continuing to observe Lizzie closely.

Lizzie was used to those glances, was used to people staring at her, whispering behind her back, murmuring stories about mothers and fathers and the distant cousin of this or that aunt's brother. She knew the look from top to bottom and how they wrinkled their noses in distaste when taking in the spikes on her shoes and she just laughed, laughed because it was so much easier than to take them all seriously.

But something in the way this girl looked at her over the rim of her glasses was different and that unsettled Lizzie.

She moved to the side, hid herself in between a group of business-men and overfilled garbage cans, blinking to see if the girl was still watching her.

She was.

The girl's glance travelled between the book in her lap and Lizzie, while her pen scurried over the pages. Lizzie furrowed her brow, disappeared behind a wall only to reappear at the other side and to again catch the girl's watchful eyes. She seemed to expect her.

But what caught her completely off guard was the sudden smile, playing on the corners of her mouth.

She laughed and that disturbed Lizzie greatly.

It was not the open, not the boisterous, way too familial laugh, she knew so well, it was the little twitch around her lips, the flashing up, she could easily detect even across the distance, conveying the impression that the girl could see right into her soul.

And it infuriated her.

"What are you doing?", she demanded to know, now towering (the additional ten centimetres gave her some kind of height advantage) over the girl, who didn't seem to be in the least intimidated.

"Curious?", she asked and her light brown eyes pierced right into Lizzies green ones.

"No", Lizzie retorted, hands on her hips, while pushing some wayward strands of hair out of her face, that escaped Jane's carefully constructed hairstyle from the previous evening. "I just want you to remove whatever you wrote on that page."

"Which page?", the girl asked and smiled, the same subtle smile as before, while placidly closing the book.

"The one about me." Lizzie stared at her, trying to hide her tiredness and all the other emotional stuff behind her apparent bad temper.

"So she's not only curious but also a narcissist!", the brown-eyed girl remarked and her lips contorted into an amused smile. "What makes you think this page is about you? I could just as easily have been drawing those guys, you hid behind."

Lizzie arched an eyebrow. "Just the fact that you know I was hiding. So come on, give me the page."

"Ah! She's an intelligent one, how interesting!" Still smiling she opened the book again to write something down.

"What the hell are you doing?", Lizzie demanded to know, more irritated this time. The girl looked up for a moment.

"_And_ she's getting impatient."

"Oh please, stop the psychoanalysis and give me that picture, I have neither the time nor the inclination to hang around here the whole day", Lizzie hissed and reached out to grasp the paper.

The girl's gaze wandered from the outstretched hand with the chipped off nail varnish and over the red silk-dress towards Lizzies blazing eyes.

"Psychoanalysis, urgh", she grimaced. "I'm not a big fan of Freud, the guy's way too overrated in my opinion, not to mention his giant ego and mummy-issues." A shake of the head and some more strokes with the pen followed this explanation.

"Give me-"

"Red isn't your typical colour, is it?" The brown eyes scurried over the prom-dress and then back to her book. "You also don't seem to be the type to wear pearls for that matter."

"And that's no psychoanalysis?", Lizzie asked unnerved while wondering at the same time why the hell she even reacted to the girl's questions.

"No, because then I probably would've attributed your unusual choice of dress and jewels to attempts to please your daddy." She lifted one eyebrow. "Unresolved Oedipus complex, you know?"

Both girls just looked at each other and with a ripping sound, that sent shivers down Lizzies spine, she tore the page out of the book and handed it to Lizzie.

"Here", she said and Lizzie reached for the paper, but the girl with the glasses didn't let go.

"Do you know where you're going to sleep tonight?", she asked, her gaze penetrating.

Lizzie tensed. "Yes", she said tersely and ripped the paper out of her hand.

"You're sure about that?", the girl called after her, when Lizzie abruptly turned around and walked down the platform, dragging her heavy suitcase behind her, which rumbled and jangled and bumped painfully against her calves.

She tried to ignore her, to pretend she wasn't there, the girl with the brown eyes, who walked next to her as if they were the best of friends.

"You're alone", the girl observed. Lizzie didn't say anything.

"That's okay, really it is", she continued. "London is great when you're travelling alone." She swiftly circled a garbage can in her way, which Lizzie had hoped would stop her. "But not if you don't know where to sleep at night. The streets get dangerous in the dark, especially for girls in red silk-dresses and way too high shoes."

"What do my shoes have to do with this?", Lizzie asked against her will, while trying to find a destination, she could at least _possibly_ have.

"You won't be able to run in them", the girl replied. "You can't even walk in them, let alone do a little race, not to mention your suitcase."

"I know where I want to go", Lizzie answered through gritted teeth, pulling rather violently at her suitcase to get it around some hoardings, that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

"I don't doubt that you have a destination", the girl said and stopped walking. "I just think you forgot the middle part." She cocked her head and Lizzie realized that she too, had stopped walking. Well, _Fuck_.

"You know, the part between a decision and the actual achievement of said objectives", the girl explained.

Lizzie just looked at her. "You're standing at the train station and you want to get away so badly, but you haven't even bought the damn ticket, while you're wondering if you want to run till Edinburgh or if London provides enough distance." She was now gesticulating wildly with her hands, pointing at the Welcome-to-London-sign over their heads. "And then you realize that we're on an island and that in the next six hours you won't be able to get further than Averdeen, unless you catch a flight but then you would have to decide. Europe? Asia? America? Africa, perhaps?" Her eyes grew bigger with each continent and her hands cut through the air. "And if you've chosen a continent, there's still the question, where exactly you want to go, which city, which county... Big city or a village? The coast or mountains? How long do you think it'll take? Getting there and then figuring out, what exactly you want to do there? An hour? Two? Three weeks, perhaps? Do you know what you want to do in the meantime? How to earn money and find a place to sleep?"

In the course of this little speech the muscles in Lizzies face started to quiver and it took all her willpower to hold up her mask, to protect, to _stay strong_.

"What do you care?", she hissed and her grip around her suitcase intensified.

"I know everything about running away", the girl said with a faint smile and hid her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. "And you're just starting."

"I'm here", Lizzie said, her eyes suddenly defensive and pleading at the same time. "Isn't that enough?"

"Of course." The brown eyes lit up. "If you want to be home again in three days."

"No." The word reverberated clearly and coldly between them and they just looked at each other for a while. "I don't want to go back."

"Okay", the girl said, her brown eyes soft. An announcement resounded. The train from Plymouth pulled into the station and over the hissing and wheezing of the train and the sounds of the descending passengers nobody uttered a word.

Lizzies grip on her suitcase loosened a bit, strands of hair, that had escaped the confines of her bun, tickled and teased her face and bare shoulders. The other girl sighed and took a step towards Lizzie.

"Do you know where you're going to sleep tonight?", she asked again, her head slightly cocked. Lizzie opened her mouth, one, two times, searching for an answer before she looked at the girl in front of her. "No", she then said and the muscles in her neck and shoulders tensed at the word, not wanting to admit defeat.

"Then come with me", the strange girl said with a sigh and put her book back into her bag. "We're going to find you a middle part."

* * *

The girl, who introduced herself as Anne, took her with her into her apartment, a small two-bedroom-thing with colourful scarves and black-and-white photographies on the walls and huge oriental cushions on the floor.

It happened in the bathroom, when Lizzie carefully pulled the pins and pearls out of her bun, wincing when she ripped out too much hair. She sighed in relief, when the long strands of dark brown hair finally fell freely over her shoulders and suddenly she remembered that she was still holding the piece of paper in her hand, which Anne had given her at the train station.

It was thicker than the papers she knew from art lessons at school and of a yellowish tinge, like a parchment or an old newspaper page. It scratched against her skin, when she opened it.

Anne hadn't lied, when she said, she had been drawing.

Lizzie stared at her own face in black and white, at the strands of hair hiding her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, clearly visible even through the thick jacket, the defiance and rigidity with which she held her head and she had the feeling, she couldn't breathe anymore.

Her gaze fell on the pearls next to the basin and she thought about the effort, Jane had undertaken the previous evening to get them all in her hair. _You're so pretty, _she'd said, beaming with pride. _My beautiful baby sister, so grown up!_

"Tea is ready", Anne's soft voice sounded at the other side of the door and she knocked against the frame. Lizzie nodded, even though Anne couldn't possibly see that and zipped up her sweatshirt.

"I'm coming."

The curtain made of red and turquoise pearls clinked, when she entered the living-room. Anne already sat on one of the cushions, a cup without handle but in a lime-green frosh-design clutched tightly in her hands.

Lizzie held up the paper. "Why?", she asked and sat down, cross-legged on one of the cushions.

Anne just shrugged. "You seemed lost."

"Do you always draw people, who seem lost?", Lizzie asked, an eyebrow arched.

"Preferably", Anne retorted and smiled. "Train stations seem to attract them magically."

Lizzie nodded, pushing her cold bare feet under her thighs, sipping on her tea. Chamomile, she realized, Jane always made tea like that. "And what are you doing at said train stations?"  
Anne shrugged again. "Finding them", she answered cryptically and took another sip of her tea.

"The lost ones?" Lizzie furrowed her brow, not daring to ask if she was talking nonsense or if it was the tea. "To me it seems as if they don't want to be found."

She looked at the wall to avoid the girl's gaze, letting her eyes wander over the multitude of pictures, close-ups of faces in shop or car windows, a hand bathed in sunlight, words written in the dusty window of a diner.

"But of course they do", Anne said and her eyes lit up. "That's the whole purpose of getting lost."

Lizzie avoided her eyes, the smile on her lips, the urge to defend herself in any way possible.

"I'm not lost", she then said, but it wasn't much better.

Anne looked pensively at her for a while. "But you'd like to be, right?"

Lizzies gaze rushed back to her, her body suddenly on alert. "Why the hell should I _want_ to get lost?"

Anne shrugged and pushed back some errant strands of her short, brown hair. She wore piercings in her ear, Lizzie noticed, black and pink dots in turns. "I don't know", she then said. "Why don't you tell me?"

Lizzies gaze scurried away, away from the irritating light brown colour, which seemed to shimmer golden and her dripping wet hair, falling in front of her face like some kind of curtain, hid her effectively from the prying eyes of the outside world.

She could hear Anne's sigh. "Do you know where you want to go?", she asked.

"No", Lizzie said. "I just wanted to get away."

"Running is not enough if you don't know where to run to", Anne replied with a nod.

Lizzie snorted. "Do you always talk like a fortune cookie?"

The girl grinned without her eyes loosing one damn bit of their intensity. "Preferably", she said.

"Honestly, do you know them all by heart?", Lizzie dug in deeper while staring at her tea. Her breath drew circles in the surface of the liquid and the waves reached dangerous heights.

"Sure, because I've got nothing better to do", Anne retorted and something clinked against the porcelain cup.

"Could've been an interesting collage", Lizzie remarked with a shrug and blew softly against the waves, brought them right to the verge of spilling over.

"Probably not." Anne was silent for a while, looking at Lizzie, who refused to meet her gaze. "Even though it would be interesting to collect all the different types of reactions when people open their fortune cookies and put those into a collage. Something like "_Fifty shades of curiosity_"."

"You have a weakness for people, don't you?", Lizzie asked, blinking behind the curtain of hair only to again hide behind it.

"And you one for words?" The question hung in the air and Lizzie just snorted.

Anne sighed. "Don't think of me as some kind of philanthropist", she said. "My interest in people is purely egoistical."

Lizzie cocked her head and smiled slightly. "Is that the part where you're going to kill me?"

"Nah, just the part, where I tell you that I study psychology." She grinned. "The part about killing you won't come up until I tell you what I've put into that tea."

Lizzie raised both eyebrows. "How nice of you to tell me that _now_"

"You're welcome", Anne replied and smiled softly.

Lizzie dropped her gaze and squirmed a bit uncomfortably on the blue silk cushion, pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt a bit further down and over her wrists. Hiding, it was all about hiding. _Out of sight, out of mind. _

Anne caught the motion and Lizzie felt her penetrating gaze.

"When did it happen?", the girl with the amber eyes asked sharply and leaned in.

Lizzie pressed her teeth so tightly together that it nearly hurt. "Three weeks ago", she replied, still refusing to meet Anne's eyes.

"They're still there?" Lizzie nodded while Anne's eyes travelled from Lizzies face to her wrists. Lizzie said nothing.

"But your dress...", Anne began and her gaze scurried over to the heap of red silk on the floor, shimmering in the light of Anne's apartment. "...it's sleeveless."

Lizzie snorted and the tea blistered. "That's the whole point."

Anne looked at her, an eyebrow raised, her bangs cut her forehead in a zig-zag line.

"A statement", she realized and Lizzie nodded, albeit hesitantly.

"Not even a shawl?, the ambergirl asked and smiled a bit askew. Lizzie just looked at her and shook her head.

"No."

Anne nodded. "But now you're hiding them again."

Lizzies shoulders slouched a bit. "Yes", she said and tried to sound calm and strong.

Anne sighed. "Running won't help you, Lizzie." Her voice was the perfect embodiment of monotonous self-assuredness and Lizzie would not until later understand it as her way to handle conflicts. She'd straightened her back, still sitting cross-legged on one of the cushions with her cup of tea in her hands, like an elfish sort of Buddha with piercings and golden glowing eyes.

Lizzie shrugged. "I can try, right?" She sounded more confident than she actually felt.

Anne leaned in slightly. "Of course", she said softly. "But for now, you can stay."

* * *

And she stayed. Three days. Until she, like a blind man seeing the sunlight for the first time, stumbled out and onto a London street and saw her reflection in one of the shop windows

Anne found her in front of the mirror, when she came home later after her statistic lecture, wearing an old T-Shirt with the slogan "Fairy-tales Are Hallucinations of the Dead", a pile of scissors in the washbasin in front of her, while tentatively lifting various strands of her long dark brown hair.

"Can you cut it?", she asked, when she noticed Anne's presence at the door frame.

The ambergirl raised an eyebrow. "How short?", she asked and let her way too heavy bag fall down onto the floor.

Lizzie looked at her reflection in the mirror, the yellow light of the ceiling lamp dampened the green of her eyes and painted the white of the wall in a greyish sort of yellow. She gazed at her hair and thought that she hadn't cut it since she was twelve.

"Cut everything", she said and something like adrenaline resurrected her long lost stomach and she saw how the green in her eyes seemed to light up.

Anne snorted while taking some steps towards Lizzie and picked up one of the scissors, Lizzie had selected, one, which was normally used to cut cardboard and other stuff. "But not with these!", she cried out and inspected them with such evident distaste in her eyes that Lizzie started laughing.

"Do you think they won't cut properly?", she asked with big eyes and looked at the blades, which were longer than Anne's hand.

The ambergirl snorted. "Sweetie, what do you think your hair is made of? Steel perhaps? Or just magical tendrils?" She bent down and began rummaging in the cupboard under the washbasin.

"Jane always called it Medusa hair", Lizzie replied before she realized that she'd perhaps revealed too much.

Anne's only reaction to this statement consisted of hitting her head with a loud bang against the washbasin, when she tried to rise again.

"I hope not!", she managed to get out, while muttering curses under her breath. "I'm deathly afraid of snakes."

Lizzie giggled. "Then perhaps the big scissor could prove to be useful after all", she suggested, while observing Anne, who put the little black case, she'd retrieved from the cupboard, next to the washbasin and now reached for an oversized towel with an irritating flower pattern, which she draped around Lizzies shoulders and forced her to sit on the stool in front of the mirror.

"I don't kill anyone, not even snakes", she declared matter-of-factly, while arranging Lizzie's hair on the towel. "Not to forget that I normally cut wires with that one."

"Wires?" Lizzie looked questioningly at her in the mirror.

"Wires", Anne confirmed and opened the little black case, revealing a set of professional looking scissors and combs. "I chained my Moringas to their stakes", she explained with a laugh.

"Aha. Your Moringas." Lizzies already bemused expression grew even more confused, when she crinkled her nose. "Is that a code for pot, I'm not aware of?"

Anne started laughing so hard that she nearly choked on the pins, she held with her teeth and which she used to pin up the top layer of Lizzies hair. "No", she managed to say and some pins fell clattering down onto the floor. "No, it's no marijuana."

"Then why do you've got these plants on your balcony?", Lizzie asked, amused by the ambergirl, who fought her laughing fit like a little child.

"So that I can sue my neighbours for damage compensation, when the idiots next door steal them", she explained, while applying water to the strands of hair. "The leaves are good for you health, if you eat them daily", she explained, before both of them became silent again.

Anne looked at her in the mirror, scissor in hand. "Are you sure that is what you want?"

Lizzie nodded. "Like a dead man."

* * *

It was surprisingly easy to see the strands fall down, to see how the long dark tendrils fell from her neck and left it bare and exposed.

She remembered how Jane always fussed with her hair at girls-nights, braided and pinned it up into some complicated hairstyles. She'd let her do it, even though she couldn't stand the constant prodding and poking. She remembered how her mother told her that her hair was the only beautiful thing about her and how her Dad explained that she had inherited her hair colour from his mother, her Granny Rosie.

She thought about how many memories you could connect to some dead cells, while she watched the keratin fall.

Finally it was over. She saw Anne running her hands through her hair for the last time and then she was there, Lizzie Bennet, with hair not even reaching her chin.

She liked it, surprisingly. Cutting her hair hadn't been about improving her looks, looking _different_ had been her only goal, but she liked the side effect, the way the short strands accentuated her cheekbones, making her look older and more mature.

"You've done that before, haven't you?", she asked Anne and a shadow clouded the gold of the ambergirl's eyes.

"Yes", she said and and forced herself to smile. "I cut my hair myself."

Lizzie gazed at her with eyes seemingly bigger, the green larger, with the new hairstyle, but she didn't ask the question, that burned a hole in her tongue.

"Can you dye them, too?", she asked instead and pulled a bottle of _Directions_ out of her bag, which lay next to her feet.

Anne eyes became huge, when she saw the bottle of hair dye and she swallowed rather obviously before answering. "Honestly?", she asked. "You want to dye them in _that_ colour?"

Lizzie nodded. "I want to run, do you remember?"

Anne squinted her eyes. "You're not running anymore, my dear", she said, taking the bottle from Lizzies hands. "You're flying already."

It wasn't just the dying, it was the bleaching, the washing and the repeated application of hair dye, a routine Anne seemed to have brought to perfection and her fingers worked diligently through Lizzies hair.

She attempted to ask her about her apparent knowledge but Anne just shrugged it off and worked on another strand.

She made tea during a period of exposure, taking off her disposable gloves with such grace, that made her experience plainly obvious and sat down on one of the pillows.

She started talking. Awkwardly at first, she managed to get out a lot of insignificant, seemingly unconnected, deeply important remarks, followed by a raised eyebrow from Anne and then the need to elaborate again and again and then finally the stream of words, tumbling from her lips in a rush, which was only stopped by hidden obstacles, lurking beneath the surface, like stones in the riverbed.

Anne listened without judging, without even trying to stop her. The gold of her eyes grew warmer, a constantly blazing flame and when Lizzie was finished, when the stream dried out and she was left hollow and empty, the ambergirl didn't say anything for a while and then four words, that turned Lizzies world upside down.

_What do you want?_

She had no idea what she wanted and never had, it was a part of her, the part, which defined and characterized her. May I present? Lizzie Bennet, _undecided_.

It made her father laugh, it made Jane shake her head in constant worry and it threw her mother into various fits of nerves – Lizzie Bennet, cherry pit spitting world champion, winner of every science contest since she was twelve, the unchallenged _queen_ when it came to riding a bike while standing on the saddle, had no idea what she wanted in life.

But when Anne uttered these four words as if it was some kind of spell and Lizzie just the jinxed raven of an evil witch in some stupid, _stupid_ fairy-tale, an answer tickled her tongue and she voiced it without thinking.

"Medicine", the freed raven said while spreading its wings and Lizzie covered her mouth with both hands in shock. Did she really just say that?"

The flame in Anne's eyes flared up, but before she could say something the alarm clock shrilled, the period of exposure was completed, the dye had done its work.

While Lizzie sat down again on the chair in the bathroom, Anne fetched her old radio from the depths of her bedroom, placed it in the shower and began seeking for some Alternative-Indie-whatever-channel.

She heard the chords, soft and cautious and Anne began to hum along the lines of Bon Ivers _RE:Stacks_, while washing the dye out of Lizzies hair.

"_There's a black crow, sitting across from me, his wiry legs are crossed..._" Anne smiled, catching Lizzie's eyes in the mirror. "_He is dangling my keys, he even fakes a toss... Whatever could it be, that has brought me to this loss?_"

"So which one of us has a weakness for words now?", Lizzie murmured, wiping away small drops of water, that made her way down her cheeks, but Anne did not even dignify that comment with an answer and just continued humming quietly and Lizzie had to admit, she actually liked the song.

" _On your back with your racks, as the stacks are your load", _Anne sang while drying Lizzies hair with another towel, its floral design as hideous as the one before.

And then, "_it's the sound of the unlocking and lift away..". _Anne attempted to lift the towel but Lizzie wouldn't let her, ripping it away herself and revealing a broad grin, sparkling green eyes and a tousled heap of short pink hair.

* * *

Three weeks later they sat again in Anne's living-room, tea cups in their hands. Lizzies hair was still pink.

"A friend of mine is in dire need of an assistant for his trip to Kenya", Anne suddenly remarked and looked over to where Lizzie sat, cross-legged on the floor, one hand tracing her bare neck, unconsciously missing the lost weight of her hair.

"An assistant?", Lizzie asked surprised. Since she'd admitted her wish to study medicine, she'd begun to voluntarily attend some lectures while Anne was at Uni, struggling with statistics, but something still kept her from applying for a place at university for the coming semester.

"You already completed some medical trainings at hospitals, right?"

Lizzie nodded, out of pure boredom she'd been doing practical trainings during summer holidays at the hospital where her uncle worked as a surgeon, even though she hadn't seen them as a career objective at the time.

"He wants to fly over to Africa next month and the assistant, who planned to accompany him is now pregnant and therefore unable to go. Mus travels with some aid organization, medical treatment in frontier areas, vaccinations, that stuff, you know. He's desperate, because he can't find anyone, who is willing and qualified to come with him on such short-notice."

"To Kenya?", Lizzie asked incredulously and gazed at Anne. "Are you kidding me?"

"I can certainly understand if you refuse to go." The ambergirl looked at her with big golden eyes. "It's a pretty hard decision and it won't be easy. You'd have to undergo a lot of treatment and necessary vaccinations, not to mention the load of medications you'd have to take – I mean, you're eighteen, right?"

"For two days now", Lizzie admitted. "You're a bit late."

"For two days?!", Anne repeated in mild horror. "Why didn't you tell me!?"

Lizzie shrugged. "I didn't want to celebrate", she said, avoiding Anne's eyes. "But you said, I could go? To Africa?" Her green eyes lit up at the prospect of going to _Africa_ and learning about medicine at the same time.

Anne nodded, a grave expression on her face. "Mus is okay with it. He wants to get to know you beforehand and you'll have to go through a lot of training, but essentially there's no hindrance to speak of. You-"

"Yes", Lizzie interrupted her. "I'll do it."

"Really?" Anne's grew, if possible, even bigger. "You're sure about that?"

Lizzie nodded. "Like a dead man."

* * *

And she did it. She went to Kenya a month later, together with Mus, a short man with a huge moustache and eyes, that lit up when he talked about Africa.

Describing Africa as a borderline experience would be an understatement in its truest form. It was so hot that the blazing heat became a personality, a constant companion, bone-crushing and paralysing, enveloping people and bodies like a suffocating blanket.

Lizzie had never felt more alive.

She tied a multitude of colourful scarves around her head and began wearing thin blouses and T-Shirts to protect her skin from the glistening sun, when she carried around Mus' equipment. She learned a fair bit of Swahili and chattered happily with the kids and teenagers, who came to the practice to get their daily dose of medicine. For them, she was some kind of attraction, an oddity with her pink hair and sparkling green eyes.

The experience was extreme, pushing Lizzie to the absolute limit of her mental and physical capabilities and exerting herself so thoroughly over the day that she practically had to drag herself to bed and under the mosquito net at night, her exhaustion keeping the nightmares at bay.

She tried not to think about what Anne said the day of her departure, the words she always seemed to repeat in the few sentences on the back of the postcards they exchanged, even though she never wrote them out.

_Talk to your sister, tell her you're well... don't punish Jane for what happened.._

It wasn't about punishing. She furrowed her brow every time, she tried to figure out why Anne was the only person, she kept in contact with.

It wasn't about punishing.

She promised Anne, she would try, even though she wasn't sure about it and tried to deflect the question every time it came up.

"I'm flying!", she'd cried out the day of her departure bouncing excitedly down the airport towards their gate, which Mus found so amusing that he took her picture with his ancient digital camera. "Did you hear me, Annie? I'm going to fly!"

Anne just smiled, her amber eyes focused on the bouncing girl with the pink hair, the worry visible in the furrow of her brow.

"Yes", she'd said, cocking her head slightly while gazing out of the window to the planes on the airfield. "Just take care so that you won't stumble."

Lizzie stopped bouncing and stuck out her tongue while calling her a killjoy. "I won't fall", she assured her friend. "Never again."

_Don't punish your sister for what happened, Lizzie..._

The days blended into each other, the pink started to fade, her hair grew longer and only some blonde tips remained.

She kept the promise, she gave Anne at Heathrow and called Jane – a whole year later, just shortly before she came back to London, her hair short and brown and barely reaching her chin, she came back to the city, where the girl with the amber eyes waited for her.

_...and your love will be, safe with me..._

And Jane cried, when she told her, she was in Africa.

* * *

**A/N: So I hope you like it and that it's readable...  
**

**However, as an explanation: Moringas are plants, my mom had them last year, their leaves are said to be very healthy, but having them (and I mean round about 15 plants or so) in our living room really looked like she was growing marijuana there;) **

**Directions, for those of you, who don't know, is a well known brand of hair dye, specialising in colours like pink, blue or green;) **

**As always: Reviews appreciated! **


	7. Chapter 6 Septimus Sevenson

**A/N: Okay next chapter;) thank you for all the kind reviews, special thanks julianabr for her analysis and theRabbit for the constant support:) I know you're all super curious about what happened to Lizzie but it will be quite some time (not until Christmas in this story) before the truth comes out, but if you pay close attention, you'll catch the hints throughout the chapters:) I'm here for all your questions, so to all you confused readers: The last chapters happened FIVE YEARS before this story when Lizzie is eighteen, it's not a flashback but more retelling of the events when Lizzie first came to London (remeber the "stranded" in chapter 4?) **

**Okay, one more to go without Darcy, but I promise the next two ones are full of him (and her;) But oh, you're going to meet a certain someone...**

**Soundtrack: Music Box - Regina Spektor**

**Disclaimer: Still not mine, I travel in trains for Fudge's sake, not carriages!**

* * *

**Chapter 6 Septimus Sevenson  
**

"Ah, look out!", Lizzie Bennet cried out five years later, after all the sunburns were healed, her hair reached her ribcage again and Jane didn't suffer a nervous breakdown every time she called, while sliding down the long corridor on the top floor of the social sciences building, which lead towards the laboratories, closely followed by Charlotte, while wearing a pair of oversized, blue-green, self-made socks.

"Get away there!", she shouted at a group of students, who were caught in an intense discussion, while studying their respective notes. The group flew apart when Lizzie's shrill cry of warning reached them, only to nearly loose all their papers when a whirlwind of brown locks and blue fabric ripped through them, followed by an agitatedly talking girl with a flushed face, who murmured a heap of apologies.

"Sorry!", Lizzie also exclaimed, turning around halfway before making another attempt to slide down the rest of the hallway and to flee from Charlotte, who carried both their jackets and bags (including the camera) while muttering curses under her breath.

Lizzie had no sympathy for Charlotte's tirade. Sure, she was the one carrying their stuff and sure, she too wouldn't find it amusing to play servant or be abused as some kind of drudge, but as a matter of fact, Lizzie never forced Charlotte to do so. She could've just let it drop, when Lizzie pressed the garments in her hands to do sock slides down the hallway – luggage had a way of always getting back to you, like a twisted sort of Karma.

But no, Charlotte had decided to be in a particularly bad mood today (something Lizzie could understand, conversations with her Mum had the same effect on her if she did not moderate them) and who was she to tell Charlotte, what to do?

Okay, the sock-sliding had been a try.

But evidently one gone wrong, because Charlotte vehemently refused to even take of her shoes (an insistence on propriety, Charlotte attributed to her strict catholic upbringing – please, in which paragraph does the bible forbid you to bare your feet?). The attempt to cover the upper part of your body, Lizzie could have understood, heck she even would have feigned understanding if Charlotte had problems with bare legs or knees, but besides the fact that Charlotte was the first one every summer to stalk around in the skimpiest bikini known to mankind, feet covered in socks were no taboo, right?

Speaking of feet, hers were at the moment occupied with performing the longest sock-slide in the history of sock-slides and despite Charlotte's protests, Lizzie was fairly sure that she would make it around that corner if not -

Completely occupied with holding her body as streamlined as possible in order to make it around that corner, which connected the developmental psychology laboratories with those of the neuropsychology department, Lizzie was not aware of the fact that there seemed to be someone else in her way until she bumped headfirst into what seemed to be brick wall.

"Urgh!", it sounded, a mix of the sound of collision and the groan, that escaped both lips and Lizzie would've landed most inelegantly on her posterior if the brick wall had not suddenly discovered a pair of arms and held her upright.

Both of them swayed a bit, out of an instinct Lizzie had woven her hands around the guy's arms and she laughed when she regained her balance.

He returned the smile, supplementing it with a slightly askew smirk, which revealed perfect, pearly white teeth and she had to admit that he was handsome with a head of tousled, short hair of a reddish-brown shade, which an avid Twilight-reader probably would have described as bronze-coloured.

"Hey", he said, without letting her go and his blue eyes lit up.

"Hey back", she replied, letting go of him, but his hands remained where they were. She raised an eyebrow. "I think you can release me now."

He laughed again and she noticed that he was really, really handsome, a bit like Robert Pattinson but healthier and his hair was a bit more reddish. "Sure?", he asked. "I don't want to risk any further injuries. You might faint, you know?"

"No, believe me, that's not going to happen", she replied and lifted one sock-clad foot. "See? I'm stable."

He let go of her. "Then I'll have to trust you, I think." Again the smirk and the perfect row of 32 flawless teeth and she caught herself looking for fangs for a moment.

"I told you to believe me", she replied. "Trust is a completely different thing." _Slash one I'm not harbouring any time soon, _she thought and tugged at one of her socks.

"And here I thought, faith was the thing you practise at the church two blocks away from here." He acted surprised. "I must be mistaken then."

She laughed. "Seems to be a common occurrence."

"Hey!", he opened his mouth to protest. "You nearly knocked me out not two seconds ago and you already read me like a book!" He grinned. "That went fast!"

"Oh don't be so smug about that!", she retorted. "It just means that you're pretty transparent."  
"Was that supposed to hurt me?" He leaned in a bit and she smelled cigarettes.

"Definitely", she wanted to answer, but right then Charlotte closed the gap between them and with a thud she dropped the pile of jackets, bags and scarves to the floor right in front of Lizzie.

"¡Basta ya!", she hissed and crossed her arms defiantly in front of her chest. "I told you sock sliding in an university building is a dumb idea, but does anybody listen to me? Mierda, No! "Take this, Char", is all she says before rushing down the hallway!" She directed the last statement at the completely overwhelmed vampire-guy, he raised an eyebrow, but, Lizzie observed, also retreated several steps back, when Charlotte with hair like black lightnings turned towards him.

"And what came out of it? You could've broken your ass, careless as you are!", she cried out, an angry red rising in her cheeks.

"Charlotte, I wouldn't have-", Lizzie begun, but vampire-guy interrupted her.

"It's possible to break one's ass?", he asked, curious and amused at the same time.

"One's tail bone, to be precise", Lizzie answered with a glance sidewards, because she was still caught in a staring contest with Charlotte. "It's an ugly business, takes long and is quite painful."

"Aha", he managed to say and looked from one girl to the other. "Interesting."

"That's nothing in comparison to the fact that you could have broken both your wrists just as easily", Charlotte continued with a scowl. "And I know damn well that you still have to type your complete Kant-essay. Believe me, I wouldn't have done that."

"You wouldn't have saved me from Professor Asshole's wrath?", Lizzie asked, acting as though this information hurt her deeply.

"Who's Professor Asshole?", vampire-guy asked, a grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Type 2", Lizzie replied, still focused on Charlotte who seemed to be fuming with ire.

"Are you warm?", Lizzie asked curiously and obviously without thinking and Charlotte opened her mouth to reply, but vampire-guy was faster.

"Are you talking about a person or diabetes?", he chimed in, but none of the girls reacted.

"You're asking me if I'm _warm_?", Charlotte exploded right at that moment and her hair seemed to straighten up like the fur of a dog. "Of course I'm warm, Lizzie! I just carried your damn jacket, bag and shoes four storeys up and three hallways down and you ask if I feel warm?! I'll tell you something, Madame-"

"You name is Lizzie?" Again another comment from vampire-guy, he leaned a bit towards Lizzie so that she again caught the scent of cigarettes.

"Do you think it funny?!", Charlotte cried out and stared down at Lizzie with a height difference of at least five centimetres.

"No", the girl said automatically and looked at Charlotte with big eyes full of mischief.

"No?", both, Charlotte and the vampire, repeated and looked at each other in astonishment when they realized they'd spoken in unison.

Lizzie caught the symmetry of their expressions and started laughing, which caused both to blink in confusion.

"I wouldn't dare make fun of you", she assured Charlotte, having gained control over her laughing fit before she turned towards vampire-guy. "And no, my name is not Lizzie." She curtseyed. "Allow me? Septimus Sevenson, the seventh son of a seventh son, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sir." She straightened and grinned before retreating a few steps to take a run-up.

"Oh, and Charlotte?", she said, while getting her socks in place. The so addressed girl raised her chin. "It wasn't just my stuff you carried." She grinned mischievously. "The red bag contains the camera."

"Which camera?", Charlotte exclaimed, mouth agape, while Lizzie took her run-up and slid down the rest of the hallway with arms stretched out widely like some kind of bird.

"Yours of course!", she replied before crying out: "On to new adventures!" , while Charlotte lunged for the pile of garments in search for the red bag and vampire-guy looked after the mane of brown curls with a slightly askew smile.

* * *

It was somewhat self-explaining that after this episode, Lizzie would be the first one to reach the room Anne had been assigned to for her study and she stopped the power of her movements by grabbing for the door knob, which resulted in a rather undignified, albeit dramatic entrance, when she tumbled in to the laboratory.

Anne looked up and Lizzie was again surprised how little the ambergirl had changed over the last five years.

Her hair was still short and spiky, standing around her head and making her look like a pixie. She still wore piercings in her ears, even though they'd changed over the years, instead of the pink and black dots, she wore a variation of blue and green ones and a skull and a ladybird in the other ear.

Also her way of dressing was still the same. She wore her usual skinny jeans, which left her ankles bare, a pair of yellow socks with a floral pattern and black delicate leather shoes to a blue-white striped T-Shirt and a small cotton waistcoat.

"Ah", she said, when she caught sight of Lizzie and her golden eyes lit up. "Hello Lizzie, seems like you didn't get lost this time." She winked good-naturedly, it was an old joke between them, used in everyday conversations to refer to one of their first encounters, which in company caused a good deal of curious glances, when Anne asked her in front of everyone if she'd found anyone recently and Lizzie, with a roll of her eyes, answered in the negative and then proceeded to ask after crows holding keys.

"This building", Lizzie stretched out her arms, "is a labyrinth, but not big enough to get lost in it. Sooner or later you reach a staircase, that's a law of nature."

Anne raised an eyebrow. "And do these laws of nature also explain why you're not wearing shoes?"

Surprised Lizzie looked down to her feet in the blue-green socks and cocked her head. "Oh I totally forgot about that", she then said with a shrug. "They're so thick that you don't even feel it, when you're not wearing shoes."

"I know." Anne grinned. "I've knitted them."

"Of course you did." With a sigh Lizzie dropped into one of the leather chairs and watched Anne, sorting through the wires for the EEG.

"Do you know which film comes to my mind when seeing this?", Lizzie asked suddenly, knees pressed against her chest, her hands clutched into the thick wool of her socks.

"_Matrix_?", Anne asked without looking up while disentangling another knot.

"How do you know that?", Lizzie asked irritated and let go of one foot, which now dangled loosely in the air.

"Lizzie everything remembers you of _Matrix_", Anne declared with a sigh and smiled.

"That's not true!", Lizzie cried out and her curls fell in her face. She blew them away angrily. "Not _everything_ remembers me of _Matrix_!"

Anne raised an eyebrow. "When we went out to that ice cream parlour last summer with the pink interior design and the jukebox, playing only music of the 60s, you were also completely determined that we were either a part of _Grease_ or living in the Matrix."

"But that was true!", Lizzie countered and raised her chin defiantly.

"It was an ice cream parlour, Lizzie! _Grease_, okay, there was definitely some 60s flair, but _Matrix_? That's a totally different concept! At least concerning colours..."

"It was pink, Anne. Pink. Pretty near the colour you call hot pink!" She shook her head.

"Do you've got a problem with the colour pink?", Anne asked amused and tugged some errant strands of hair behind her ear.

Lizzie grinned and her green eyes lit up. "No, don't think so."

"So then, what was so horrible about the interior design if you don't have a problem with the colour? Weren't you the one, who dragged us there?"

"It's scary", Lizzie burst out and sat up. "All that pink and silver furniture, than the jukebox and the bubble gum machine... It was scary, way too perfect and artificial... I mean. did you take a good hard look? I'm sure there was not even a grain of dust on those tables!"

Anne laughed. "So if following hygiene prescriptions is your definition of scary..."

"It fulfils the Matrix-criteria", Lizzie replied, her brow furrowed.

"Lizzie, _everything_ fulfils the Matrix-criteria. That's the point of the film. " Anne shook her head softly and walked away, light-footed and with her hands outstretched. That was so typical of Anne, Lizzie thought, she made walking look like flying.

"Don't you dare call _Matrix_ a film", she threatened, but her eyes sparkled. "It's more than that."

"Yeah, I know", Anne replied in a melodious voice. "It's a philosophy, a new perspective, everything mankind ever waited for." She threw Lizzie a glare. "You abused a whole evening to explain that to me."

"It was important", Lizzie declared and held up both hands with a grin. "You've never seen _Matrix_ before."

"You were drunk, Lizzie and just wouldn't get off my couch. There was nothing left to do despite listening to you rambling after you refused to go to bed."

"Admit that those were the three most interesting hours of your life!", Lizzie demanded while arranging her feet on the chair.

Anne turned around, hands on her hips. "Yeah, I have to admit that those were the three most interesting hours of my life... listening to you trying to get out the word "illusion"." She shook her head, her amber eyes sparkling. "I never thought a sole person could disfigure a word so much."

"Hey, don't destroy _my_ illusion!"

"It's your own fault, Lizzie", Anne called out from behind the silk screen, which separated her computer from the camera. It was normally a part of Anne's apartment and coloured in a pale green with embroidered roses on one side and delicate blue flowers on the other.

"Do you want to tell me that _Matrix_ did not enrich your life?"

Anne's head appeared from behind the screen. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

"Anne!", Lizzie cried out and wanted to add something, when suddenly with a loud _bang_ the door sprung open and an angrily fuming Charlotte stepped in.

"Lizzie Bennet!", she nearly screamed and the volume with which she yelled these two words, made Lizzie shrink back in her seat.

"Charlotte Lucas!", she managed to get out and turned around in her seat to face her friend. "Still too warm?"

"Lizzie Bennet, don't you dare make fun of me!", Charlotte bellowed, before stumbling over one of the bags, she'd dropped to the floor beforehand.

"Charlotte Lucas, stop repeating yourself", Lizzie threw back, her cheek leaned against the back of the leather chair, a grin playing on her lips.

"You!", Charlotte spat and, with an angrily flushed face, she pointed at Lizzie, who ripped open her eyes in astonishment.

"Me?", she asked innocently and folded her hands under her chin. "What have I done now?"

"You abandoned me!", Charlotte cried out, hands still in the air.

"I abandoned you." Lizzie nodded, her chin scratching against the leather. "What else?"

"You left your stuff there!" Charlotte's eyes grew even bigger behind her glasses and scurried from Lizzie to the silk screen, where Anne could be heard typing on her keyboard.

"I left my stuff there." Again Lizzie nodded, her eyes sparkling mischievously. "Sounds quite horrible. What else?"

"You have... You.. You're kidding me!", Charlotte finally cried out slightly breathless and kicked the bags away, that blocked her path. "Anne, she's kidding me!"

"I know", was Anne's only answer from behind the silk screen and Lizzie could do naught but laugh at the sight of Charlotte's grim expression.

"Did you find your camera?", she teased and wriggled a bit on the chair until only her eyes and a head of dark brown hair were visible over the back of the chair. And her hands to both sides of her eyes, decorated with green nail varnish, some shades darker than her eyes.

"You...", Charlotte spluttered helplessly and her hand, pointing at Lizzie, trembled.

"Something else I have done?", Lizzie suggested, an eyebrow raised.

"Why didn't you tell me, you brought my camera?", Charlotte finally managed to say.

"My my, where would be the fun in that?", Lizzie asked curiously and accomplished an expression of honest interest.

"The fun?!" She got closer to the pair of green eyes over the back of the chair and Lizzie, sensing the threatening danger turned around laughingly and with a kick against the floor she rolled away and behind the silk screen, where the chair bumped against the windowsill and stopped.

"Lizzie, you abandoned me and left me there with this guy, you nearly knocked out before and who so clearly has the hots for you that he didn't even wait a second after you were gone before asking me, if your name really was _Septimus_." Charlotte had her hands on her hips but her voice was back to normal.

"Urgh, Stalker", Lizzie said and grimaced.

"Why Stalker?", Charlotte asked, brow furrowed, while getting out of her jacket. "I think it's sweet. He's definitely interested in you."

"Don't you think I would've given him my real name if I _was_ interested?", Lizzie replied and gazed out of the window. It was a beautiful day outside, sunny, a tiny piece of blue sky and some birds were visible, like black dots breaking through the blue.

"That's the problem with you, Lizzie. You're never interested." Charlotte's black eyes pierced right into Lizzies face, who was now trying hard not to look her friend in the eye.

"Yes", Anne chimed in. "If I didn't know for sure that you have a thing for guys, I would have introduced you to some of _my_ friends ages ago."

"Anne...", Lizzie complained with a grimace and threw her a look, which transported the words _Why-do-you-attack-me-from-behind-now?_ so clearly that Anne could do naught but grin. She looked like a pixie when she did that.

"Really, Lizzie. The guy was hot and he listened to every word you said. So what's you freaking problem?"

"He looks like Edward Cullen", Lizzie replied defiantly and suppressed the urge to cross her arms over her chest.

"And that's a problem to you?", Charlotte asked. "If I met someone, who looks like Robert Pattinson and asks for my name, I wouldn't be moping around here and staring out of the window."

"Thanks, Char. For _that_ piece of information."

Charlotte sighed. "I just don't get it! Ever since we moved in together, you never had a longterm relationship." She cocked her head. "If I think about it, you never had a relationship, which surpassed one night, at all." She gazed at Lizzie expectantly, but the girl just sighed and avoided her eyes.

"Lizzie?", Anne asked softly and while Lizzie was probably able to refuse Charlotte's blazing eyes, it was nearly impossible not to look at the ambergirl, if Anne wanted her to.

"He looked like a vampire", Lizzie finally muttered and crossed her arms defensively over her chest.

"So what?", Charlotte cried out, while beginning to clean up the mess, she'd made at the entrance. "He was hot, vampire or not and you owe it to every desperate Twilight-reader to even fucking try!"

"I'm not one for relationships, Charlotte!", Lizzie exclaimed and set up straight, her toes barely touching the floor, her expression strained.

"Of course you are, Lizzie Bennet! You're the relationship-type par excellence, you just don't want to admit it!" Her voice was despite its volume a bit dulled, because she was currently occupied with saving her camera from the pile of bags on the floor.

"And how would you know that?", Lizzie asked tersely and leapt to her feet, arms still crossed over her chest. "Because you've watched me go through so _many_ relationships?"

She sensed Anne standing behind her and she saw Charlotte's gaze jumping from her to Anne and how it suddenly darkened.

"I know you, Lizzie", she simply said. "And your way of letting guys only get close to you for some one-night-stands, just doesn't fit in with the way you live the rest of your life. You never do things just halfway and never just a bit. You throw yourself into it with every fibre of your being and damn the consequences! You're one for relationships, Lizzie, even if you don't want to admit it."

"I'm happy with the way I live my life, Charlotte, it works for me! So shut the hell up and don't tell me what to do!"

"That's exactly what it does, Lizzie!", Charlotte exploded for the third or fourth time that day. "It works but nothing more! You've got every freaking thing under control but how long will that last? Don't you want more? A lifelong relationship, a house, children, a decent husband?" Every word was accompanied with a movement of her hands and her hair flew wildly through the air.

"I'm 23, Charlotte, just like you! Didn't you just tell your Mum that you wouldn't marry your neighbour's son? And don't you handle one-night-stands the same way I do? So where's the analysis of your relationship ability?"

"It's not about me not wanting a relationship!", Charlotte cried out, while Anne nervously shifted from one foot to the other, words on her lips, she wasn't sure about. "I do one-night-stands, because it's the only thing guys are interested in when it comes to me. No relationship, just a peck on the cheek and a "I'll be going, babe" the next morning. But you've got everything, _everything_! The guys are all waiting for you, fuck, they nearly trip over their feet to have a chance with you and you're refusing everyone or run away the morning after, 'cause you don't even got the balls to fucking try!"

"Then go and marry that idiot from spain, if that's what you want!", Lizzie cried out angrily, a bitter taste on her tongue.

"I don't want to go back to Spain!", Charlotte yelled back completely unnerved and tore at her hair, which needed everything but more volume.

"Then don't go!", Lizzie shouted just as loud as Charlotte and both girls stared at each other, hands in fists, faces like angry grimaces.

They were both silent, staring contest, nobody wanted to give in but then the sound of clapping hands and Anne's cheerful laugh cut through the thick atmosphere.

"So there you have it. Do you feel better now?" Expectantly she looked from one girl to the other. Both of them broke eye contact and Charlotte tried a little smile in Anne's direction, who looked at them with hands clasped in front of her chest and a huge grin on her face.

Lizzies face was a mask when she turned around and grabbed her bag.

"Can I type my essay on your laptop, Annie?", she asked the ambergirl and pulled out her script from within the depths of her bag.

Anne nodded and pointed at the small table in front of the window, where her laptop waited. "But just typing, okay? No illegal downloads and no attempts at hacking my E-Mail provider, got it?"

Lizzie nodded, the ghost of a smile on her lips. "Got it."

Anne looked a bit dumbstruck when Lizzie didn't try to defend her honour in her typical protesting way and she swayed a bit, then turned around on her heel to get a better look at Lizzie.

"No opposition?", she asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Do you want some?", Lizzie retorted, her gaze drifting to Charlotte, who was currently occupied with the contents of her bag.

Anne smiled softly. "Always."

Then she clapped her hands, a soft noise, that got Charlotte's attention.

"Do you want to go first?", Anne asked and held up the cap with the electrodes. Charlotte nodded and looked over to Lizzie, who seemed to be completely occupied with starting Anne's old laptop.

"Okay."

* * *

Calling the atmosphere in the room strained, while Anne secured the cap on Charlotte's head, sprayed gel into her hair and connected electrodes, would be a gross understatement.

Anne tried to lighten the mood with her way of bouncing up and down between them, her delicate arms moving like a pair of wings through the air, but her effort was for naught, Charlotte kept silent and Lizzie was completely caught up in typing down the ten page essay, she'd been doing in between classes the whole week and alternately cursing Anne's laptop and Darcy.

When Anne was finished with Charlotte (finally every electrode's light had turned green and she'd gone through some trials successfully) Lizzie at last looked up, right in time to see Charlotte leaving the room with gel clotted hair and a bottle of shampoo.

Anne, who'd been washing her hands in the washbasin near the door, caught Lizzies glance and furrowed her brow.

"What's up?", she asked and her golden eyes glowed a bit supernaturally, when the sunlight hit them.  
"Do you think she's right?" Lizzie eyes were doubtful and she chewed on the pen, she used to add some notes to her essay.

"Are you talking about Charlotte?" A tentative nod. "Do _you_ think she's right?"

Lizzie groaned exasperated. "Annie, don't do that therapist crap!"

The ambergirl shrugged and smiled. "I've got my master in psychology now, this way of questioning is only natural, I suppose."

"Last time I looked, you still needed extra education after your studies to become a therapist, doctor Freud." Lizzie rolled her eyes and placed her head on her arms, which were sprawled over the table and laptop.

"Now you're wrong, Lizzie. I'm still working on my doctor's degree, I don't have it already." She raised both eyebrows in an amused manner. "That's why you're here, right?" She held up another cap. Lizzie sighed and slowly came back onto her feet.

"Yes", she grumbled. "Let's not forget that I'm the one doing the hard work for your degree."

"Let's call it a compensation for the Matrix-evening", Anne smirked cheerily, while directing Lizzie towards the chair, Charlotte had used to sit on mere moments ago. Lizzie started protesting, unarticulated noises about why it was inexcusable to insult _Matrix_, but they quickly changed, when Anne secured the cap under Lizzies chin and she started to hiss in pain, because the clip had caught some of her hair.

"Don't be such a wimp", Anne scolded her and if Lizzie hadn't been such a paragon of restraint, she probably would have kicked her shins.

But unfortunately she wasn't five any longer and Anne wasn't Jack Goulding, the boy she'd paid back for destroying her sandcastle at the Meryton playground. Twice, to the utter horror of her mother.

Finally everything was as it should be and Anne began spraying the warm gel into her hair for better conductivity.

Lizzie with her eyes closed, tried to block out the light scratching of the needle against her scalp, Anne was one of the few people in the world, she could allow to touch her hair in a sober state without jerking back instantly.

"You know I can't do that, right Annie?", she finally asked softly, her eyes still closed.

"I know that you _think_ you can't", Anne replied. "If that makes sense."

"Oh, it makes sense", Lizzie mused. "It's just not helping."

"Do you really want help then, Lizzie?" Anne's voice was soft and questioning near her ear and Lizzie didn't dare to open her eyes, because Anne was always able to see right through her, when she made eye contact.

"I don't want to feel broken", she simply said. She sensed Anne's nod next to her ear and the ambergirl's hands on her shoulders.

"Then try", Anne said. "Meet up with the vampire or someone else. See, if a relationship develops. Open up."

Lizzie grimaced at the sound of the last words and she was freaking close to sticking out her tongue.

"Charlotte is...", Anne sighed, dropping the syringe into the washbasin. "Charlotte has to figure out for herself what she wants in life without being influenced by her mother's wishes and desires and it's not fair of her to put the blame on you."

"I know", Lizzie said quietly. "But that's Charlotte and she doesn't mean it."

Anne didn't say anything in reply, Lizzie just felt the warm pressure of her hand on her shoulder, a moment before Charlotte burst into the room with dripping wet hair, vastly improved mood and a loud story about the guy, who'd been watching her washing her hair (she'd been using the bigger washbasins in one of the bathrooms down the hallway, because they also sported warm water and so the guy probably hadn't gotten much more than a nice view on her ass).

Charlotte took photos of Lizzie after calming down and she grinned at her flatmate as if the argument from before never happened. Lizzie smiled back, posed with a peace-sign and stuck out her tongue even though Charlotte believed she would look like an angel with a docile smile and the appropriate posture.

"I'd look more like a mad scientist", Lizzie replied. She didn't like being called an angel. She was none.

* * *

A short while later, when she exited the bathroom with dripping wet hair (Charlotte hadn't left much hot water in the boiler and so forced Lizzie to wash her hair with ice water, very agreeable if you've got hair reaching your elbows) and tiptoed down the hallway, Lizzie was more than surprised to find the muscular figure and the tousled reddish brown hair of vampire-guy in front of the notice board with advertisements for test persons.

"Haven't found anything yet?", she asked softly, while trying to dry her hair with another floral towel. The so addressed vampire nearly jumped back in surprise but smiled again his 32-perfect-teeth-smile, when he recognized her.

"No, but you seem to have found something, Septimus." He bowed slightly and she just had to laugh.

"Do you know the fairy-tale?", she asked him, the blue of his eyes threatened to overwhelm her a bit.

"There's a fairy-tale to the name?", he asked curiously and leaned casually against the board, crumpling a bunch of flyers hanging there in the process.

"Yeah", she said smiling. "I don't remember the whole story. Something about a boy, who is the seventh son of a seventh son and because of that he masters every adventure on his way." She shrugged. "I liked the story, he got the princess in the end."

"I can only imagine, Septimus." He was grinning again.

"Stop calling me that, vampire", she complained and gave him a light swat against the shoulder.

"Vampire?", he asked and leaned in a bit. She felt a drop of water trickling down her jawline. "Where did you get that from?"

Oh, how she'd like to wipe that smug grin from his face! But on the other side, she was the one who started that damn vampire thing.

"What should I say? You just bear an uncanny resemblance to Robert Pattinson." She smirked.

"You should rather say that Robert Pattinson bears an uncanny resemblance to me", he replied good-naturedly. "I'm the original, everyone else is just a fake."

"You tell yourself that before sleeping every night, right?", she retorted with a slight lift of her chin.

He snorted. "I have to do _something_ to get my self-confidence back together after the last Twilight-film, don't you think?"

She cocked her head slightly. "Something tells me, that we don't need to worry for _your_ self-confidence." She risked a grin and noticed suddenly that she still wasn't wearing shoes.

"You caught me." Again the 32-perfect-teeth smile flashed up and she felt a prickling somewhere in her stomach. Lizzie returned the smile for a moment before all that staring and smiling grated on her nerves and proved to be utter ridiculous.

"So what are you doing here? Are you studying psychology?" She pointed at the notice board.

"Oh no!", he said a bit defensively and shied away from the pin board as if it had just bitten him. "I was just looking for a way to make some extra cash. I'm studying social pedagogy in the other building."

She nodded. "You should take a look at the board in the medicine buildings, the pay is better and I promise you, you won't get any strange superpowers."

"Not?" He seemed disappointed. "That's a pity, I'd like to be superman!"

"Spiderman would be a tad more likely, wouldn't it?", she asked with a laugh. "Or batman, but then you'd have to be millionaire."

He laughed but the look in his eyes got darker for a moment. "I suppose", he simply said but then his smile flashed up again and he made a step towards Lizzie.

"So you're a med student, Septimus?"

She nodded. "Yeah, fourth year now." A grin. "That's why I'm so sure about the non-existent superpowers."

"No spiders in the laboratories?"

"No spiders in the laboratories." They gazed at each other and started laughing.

"So what are you doing here in the psychology department?" He leaned in closer and again she smelled cigarettes.

"I'm helping a friend." She pointed towards the door of the laboratory. "And I probably should get back now. You know, before they start worrying about me and all that stuff..."

"All that stuff..." He smiled and she curtseyed in favour of a goodbye, but when she wanted to turn around, he grabbed her arm and forced her to stay.

"Ah Septimus..." He smiled and she had the strange feeling that all her organs started to prickle. Conveniently at the same time. "Would you deign to tell me your name?"

She smiled. "Don't you know it already?"

He shook his head. "If you want me to call you Septimus all the time..."

"Do you have a problem with the name?", she asked teasingly but gave in, when he just smiled at her.

"Lizzie Bennet", she said and put forth her hand.

"George Wickham", vampire-guy replied and shook it. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

* * *

**A/N: So did you enjoy meeting Wickham? ;) He'll be fun, I think... Anyway I'm tired and I have to pack my bag, because I'm going home for the weekend, yeah, another 5 hours in a train, after I just spent eight hours there, travelling through Germany... yikes. So I'm going now, it's ten in the evening here... and I have to get up at six, or five, I'm not sure...  
**

**To your information: Septimus Sevenson is a fairy-tale I remeber from my childhood (I know I'm not that old, certain people STILL see me as a child), I don't know if it's known outside of Germany but basically it's about what Lizzie said, a boy and adventures, a princess in the end, him being the seventh son of a seventh son helps him miracally all the time (I mean he can talk to animals, isn't that cool?) **

**Please read and review as always;) Next time: Darcy. Lots. of. it. **


	8. Chapter 7 A Dinner Part 1

**A/N: Hello, my lovelies! Here's another Lizzie/Darcy chapter (I know you've been waiting for it;) To all those, who fret that Wickham's the guy Lizzie slept with in the prologue, two things: First, Wickham's a smoker, Second, Read the prologue closely, that's all I'm going to say:) **

**Thank you for all your kind reviews, even though I feared some kind of shit storm first for bashing Edward Cullen (I'm sorry but the more I think about it the creepier this stalker/vampire thing gets). **

**To cutelilmochi: You nailed it basically, I wanted to give Lizzie some other motivation for getting close to Wickham, because I think this whole believing him on such short notice and practically demonizing Darcy is a bit immature even for Lizzie;)**

**Soundtrack: The Dirt Whispered - Rise Against**

**Disclaimer: Everything you recognize is not my own, even though I own a lot of this plot:)  
**

* * *

**Chapter 7: A Dinner Part 1: Of coughing and serial killers  
**

When Jane called, Lizzie was sitting cross-legged one one the stone tiers at the piazza in front of the British Library, her wet hair wrapped in a blue-golden scarf and piled into a turban on her head. She was kind of glad, Charlotte had remembered some "urgent stuff" she had to do and hadn't insisted on accompanying her, even though Charlotte hadn't specified the mentioned "stuff" further. Not that Lizzie wanted to know what the bloody hell she was up to.

She stared at the blinking and beeping phone for a good two minutes (Jane was kind of persistent), wondering if software designer created these displays on purpose like that, so that you just _had_ to feel bad for not answering a damn call, before she reluctantly picked up the phone and pressed it against her ear.

"Hello, Janie. What's up?", she asked, trying to sound casual, even though she didn't like being disturbed while sitting at her favourite place in the whole city.

"Lizzie? Lizzie, can you hear me?!", Jane practically screamed through the speaker and Lizzie grimaced, holding the offending phone on arm's length. Sometimes Jane's voice resembled the one of their mother alarmingly.

"Of course I can hear you, I'm not deaf you know", Lizzie declared a bit indignantly, relieved that besides her, there was only an old lady and a pair of tourists studying a map at the piazza, who were paying no attention to her at all.

"Oh, great", she heard Jane's relieved sigh and Lizzie had to smile automatically. She'd always thought, Jane's voice was doing something to her brain.

"How was your job interview?", she asked her sister and pulled her knees against her chest.

"Good", Jane replied and it felt like a deep sigh accompanied that one word, even though she couldn't possibly hear that through the continuous noise. "It went really well, the headmaster was very friendly and from what I've seen of the school, I believe I could be really happy there. Imagine, Lizzie, they have an integration- and support programme for handicapped children, as well as regular crafts and art classes!"

"Sounds like a primary school to me", Lizzie muttered with a grin, unable to resist a bit of irony.

"What did you say?", Jane asked, louder than strictly necessary. Her sister had the surprising ability to overhear things, she doesn't want to hear. Intentional or not, Lizzie wasn't so sure about that.

"Nothing", she assured Jane with a laugh. "Are you sitting in the middle of a fucking snowstorm right now?"

"No, why would you think that?", Jane asked slightly puzzled. "And quit the cursing, young lady."

"It just sounds that way", Lizzie grinned. "I was on the verge of asking if Charlie had finally abducted and dragged you to the north pole so that you two could get some one on one time."

"Lizzie!", Jane hissed and Lizzie rolled her eyes. "Here we go again..."

"Lizzie, please be polite, we-"

"But why, it's quite plausible", she interrupted her sister. "With all those freaking house guests at your apartment, it's inevitable that you two desire-"

"Lizzie", the voice of her sister grew even shriller and Lizzie had to grin, because Jane got so het up about this bit of teasing. "Believe me, being stuck with Darcy and Caroline in one apartment would also grate on my nerves. I mean seriously, those two can creep the hell out of you!"

"Lizzie-", her sister began anew, but this time another voice interrupted her. "Hey, Miss Bennet!"

"Charlie?", Lizzie asked surprised and a little alarmed, when she recognized the voice of her sister's boyfriend.

"Yeah, it's me, just thought you should now that you're put on speaker phone and that we can all hear you pretty clearly."

"Who exactly is "_we_"?" , Lizzie asked cautiously and felt the heat rising in her cheeks.

"Oh just Jane, me and Darcy..."

"Jane!", Lizzie cried out horrified. "Why didn't you bloody tell me?"

"I tried!", Jane started to explain, "But you wouldn't let me!"

"I wouldn't let you?", Lizzie repeated and startled the old lady with her shriek, who clearly outraged glared at the girl with the scarf around her head and practically sent daggers in her direction. Yeah, old lady in pink was a hell lot of scary. "Jane, that's the first fucking thing you say, when you're starting a conversation, that includes two other _invisible_ participants! Are the four words: "Lizzie, you're put on speaker phone" really too much to ask?"

"I counted five words", Charlie interjected. "If you leave out the name that is."

"Prepositions don't count, Charlie", Lizzie retorted and sorted out her legs. Damn, stone tiers could really get uncomfortable.

"Since when?", Jane asked irritated. Charlie laughed. "Since Lizzie forgot to count them."

"Hey, don't tell on me, Charlie", Lizzie bristled, but Charlie just showed his typical reaction and laughed. "Sorry, Liz."

"Urgh, don't call me that!", Lizzie pleaded and grimaced.

"Do you prefer Eliza?", Charlie asked, still laughing. Honestly, did he ever stop?

"Sure, if you're so eager to see the interior design of a forensic medicine building", Lizzie deadpanned and Charlie laughed again – really, it was getting kind of scary. What the F. Scott Fitzgerald did this guy take for medication?

"Where's Caroline by the way?", she asked in order to get the conversation back to normal.

"Still sleeping", Charlie replied and even though Lizzie couldn't possibly see his face through the telephone, it sounded like he thought that teeny tiny fact highly amusing. But Charlie found everything amusing, so perhaps the word "gloating" was more appropriate.

"She's sleeping?", Lizzie repeated surprised. "But it's four o'clock in the bloody afternoon!"

"If I remember correctly, you also managed to do that at one point, Lizzie", Jane reprimanded her, the silent _"Stop cussing"_ hung in the air.

Lizzie snorted. "Yeah, but I don't get up in between, do my make-up and eat fruits while sitting on the freaking breakfast table... even though I fell asleep on the kitchen counter one time..."

"Sounds interesting", Charlie replied laughing. "Also with make-up and fruits?"

"With make-up, yeah, because I forgot to scrub it off the night before and with fruits because Charlotte placed the damn pineapple, I bought at_ Little Waitrose, _in my arms and proceeded to take my picture..."

Lizzie shook her head and grimaced at the thought of the rather wild night, that had taken place before that photo. Bad memories shouldn't be allowed to come out and play in broad daylight.

"Is Charlotte still using it as blackmail material?", Jane asked sympathetically, while Charlie was fighting just another laughing fit.

"Yeah", Lizzie drawled. "I really have to steal her fucking laptop some time soon, or kill her if that doesn't work, because it can't go on like that..."

"Are you looking for an assassin, Lizzie?", Charlie asked.

"Yeah, do you know somebody?" She could faintly hear a snort, somewhere in the middle of the static noise and she was pretty sure, it was Darcy.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Lizzie, but that's not exactly my scene", Charlie replied good-naturedly and she laughed. "Good, because that would be kind of scary."

"Yeah", Jane deadpanned. "And I would have to ask myself, who my boyfriend of nearly six months really is."

"Charles Manson?", Lizzie suggested, a lopsided grin on her face.

"If anything, it would be Patsy Adams", Darcy's voice crawled into her ear and she felt shivers running down her spine. "Manson was a serial killer."

"Yeah, but Adams is living in exile in Spain", Lizzie threw back and rolled her eyes.

"And Manson is serving a life sentence somewhere in the USA", Darcy retorted curtly.

"Hmm, so have you decided now if I'm a killer for the Mafia or a psychopathic Beatles fan? That would be great, because then we could go back to our plans for this evening", Charlie interjected.

"Sure, Charlie, shoot!", Lizzie replied without thinking and it took her a moment before it dawned on her what she'd just said and it took another five minutes until Jane and Charlie had calmed themselves enough to talk again.

"So, what I wanted to say was that we want to celebrate Jane's successful job interview, our visit to the furniture shop and generally her moving in with me with a nice, little dinner", Charlie explained and she could faintly hear Jane's laugh through the speaker.

"It's not sure, if I got the job, Charlie", Jane admonished him with a giggle.

"Of course it is!", Charlie exclaimed and then a bit lower. "Who wouldn't want you, my angel?"

Lizzie grimaced at the whole sweet-talk, tumbling out of her phone and she tried to imagine Darcy's face, when he had to sit in a car with those two love birds, who were worse than a pair of freaking birds on a summer morning. Suicidal might be a fitting description. Or murderous. Dangerously close to a car crash right into the next Starbucks even. That would also be _political_.

"Just to get it right...", she interrupted the cooing and shooing. "All three of you are sitting in that car at the moment?"

"Is that so strange?", Charlie asked amused.

"No, I'm only trying to imagine which one of you is sitting on the back seat", Lizzie explained and gazed at the blue sky over London.

"Me and Janie. Why do you ask?", Charlie answered and Lizzie laughed. "What, Darcy, you didn't let him drive?", she teased.

"It's my car, Miss Bennet", Darcy retorted ill-humoured.

"Oh, did the sweet darling survive the night in a strange parking-lot?", she asked curiously. "Did it miss you? You know, homesickness can be a real bitch sometimes."

"It endured the night quite well, Miss Bennet."

"I'm glad to hear it", Lizzie replied with a grin, Darcy couldn't see. "And you're the only one who is allowed to drive this precious vehicle?"

"I prefer it."

Lizzie snorted and mumbled something, which distinctly sounded like "Men".

"However", Jane interjected with strained cheerfulness and Lizzie could well imagine her sister, sitting on the back seat, uncomfortably watching Darcy and the mobile-phone at the same time, as if one of them would snap and bite her at any given moment. Her sister was paranoid.

"We want to eat at "_Heaven's_", Lizzie", she added as an explanation.

"That high-class, posh restaurant?", the girl with the scarf around her head cried out, angering the old lady in pink even further, who was now angrily waving around her cane in Lizzies direction. Yeah, not scary at all.

"Do you know it?", Darcy asked in his typically condescending tone. .

"Sure, Darcy, I eat there every other Wednesday, right after my shopping trip at Prada and Gucci", Lizzie replied and rolled her eyes.

"Charlie has reservations there for eight o'clock and we want you to come with us", Jane asked quickly and rather desperate for a change in topics.

"For eight o'clock! My, my, Charlie, what a rebel you are!", Lizzie teased and got Charlie laughing again.

"If Caroline heard that..", he mused, "But you should actually thank Darcy. He got us the reservations!"

"What?", Jane cried out. "But I thought it was you!"

"Charlie likes to take the credit for things like that", Darcy replied and Lizzie could hear the roar of the engine.

"And you're helping him with that?", Lizzie chimed in, but Darcy's answer was cut short, when Jane asked her boyfriend rather loudly, why for heaven's sake (Jane's version of the F-word) he hadn't told her that. Lizzie knew that tone well and when she was also using her bright blue eyes on him, the poor guy was lost.

It also seemed to work on Charlie, because he sounded rather meek, when he assured Jane that lying to her had been the furthest thing from his mind. Their mutual affirmations grew sweeter with the minute and Lizzie tried to suppress her gag reflex.

Seemed like Darcy felt the same.

"Bingley, could you please for once concentrate on the bloody conversation?", he admonished his friend rather grumpily and she swore, she heard _someone_ cursing under his breath.

"Yes, of course!", Charlie hurried to say. "As I said, we would like you to come and eat dinner with us, Lizzie. Eight o'clock at "_Heaven's_". My treat."

"How could I resist such a temptation!", Lizzie replied with a laugh and watched how the tourists opened their lunch boxes, much to the vexation of the old lady in pink.

"Splendid!", Charlie cried out and Lizzie could well imagine him bouncing on his seat like a little boy on a sugar overdose.

"Great", Jane exclaimed in the same manner. "And put on something _appropriate_, Lizzie."

"Why the bloody hell does everyone tell me that?", Lizzie cried out exasperated and startled the other three visitors, the tourists included while the old lady waved her cane again. "What the fuck do you think I'll do? Show up at one of the poshest restaurant of the whole fucking city in nothing but a catsuit? Dancing tango with stickers on my nipples and a feather boa around my neck?"

"Lizzie...", Jane tried to soothe her while Charlie giggled like a girl in the background. Darcy said nothing.

"No, Jane, you've hurt me. Deeply. _Fucking_ deeply. Like, Mariana Trench deep. Imagine _that_, dear sister. Only because I wrap a scarf around my head when my hair is wet, doesn't mean that I've got no style or will go out in nothing but a tube top barely covering my ass!"

"You're wearing a scarf around you head?", Jane and Charlie repeated at the same time.

"What? That's all you get from this exchange?" She shook her head. "It's a pretty scarf", Lizzie defended herself and tugged at the fringe of the scarf, that fell into her face.

"It's a scarf", Charlie deadpanned the minute Jane cried out: "But not that silk scarf I bought for your birthday, right?!"

"Of course not, Janie", Lizzie replied seriously. "I bought just the same scarf with just the same golden pattern at Camden Town just to wrap it around my head when I feel like it."

"Lizzie!"

"Right, that's my name", Lizzie retorted before this conversation became too ridiculous even for her taste.

"Let's meet at the restaurant at eight and I promise to wear something decent, all right? You know, something covering all the important bits and pieces."

"It's a deal, Lizzie", Charlie replied before Jane could utter another reprimand and the following silence, Lizzie interpreted as Darcy's farewell.

Heart-warming as usual.

* * *

Lizzie Bennet was too late, when she ran down the crowed streets at quarter past eight towards the restaurant, where she was supposed to meet the rest of their group.

She'd dressed appropriately, just as Jane had wanted her to, perhaps not exactly the way her sister had imagined, but Lizzie knew London well enough to know that "_Heaven's_" wasn't a particular conservative venue, despite being one of the most expensive ones and that they didn't demand formal attire as an entry ticket.

However, for the sake of her dear sister, she'd made a bit more of an effort with her appearance tonight, even though most of her clothing was stolen from Charlotte's wardrobe.

She wore a flowing, black skirt, patterned tights and stockings with a lace ending, which ended right above her black lace boots. Add to that a long sleeved blue Print-Shirt and a vast amount of clinking silver bracelets around her wrists, which blinked and sparkled in the dancing lights of the shops and cars.

She'd even pinned up her hair (after taking off the scarf, her hair had been quite a mess and she hadn't even attempted to tame it with a brush) and in this artful disorder of a bird's nest over her neck, she'd woven some other silver bracelets.

Lizzie wasn't a big fan of make-up, some mascara on her lashes, a bit of eyeliner around her eyes when she was in the mood, but nothing more. She didn't like having some kind of paste sticking to her skin, which would sooner or later get all over her hands and clothes if she wasn't careful and she hated not being able to rub her temples in frustration without destroying some carefully constructed artwork.

Same went for lipstick, she'd never met a guy, who actually _liked_ getting bloody red paint all over his face and she didn't enjoy the taste of it at all.

She slowed down her steps, took in the crisp night air, which was comparatively warm for October and enabled her to wear only a thin jacket over her shirt. She wasn't eager to reach the restaurant, for apparent reasons. An evening with both Darcy and Caroline? She'd even prefer one with Craig and his shooting games over that.

With a sigh she took the last few steps of the staircase, that led towards the restaurant, grateful that she hadn't put on a pair of ridiculous High Heels this time. She gave the bouncer a wide smile and asked the maître d' for a table under the name "Darcy", to which she was promptly led, all the while taking in the incredible interior of the restaurant with those unbelievably high ceilings, imitating the night sky and the concrete walls painted in blue and white. The dark wooden tables with the lilac coloured lanterns were partly separated by long silk panels in blue and white and Lizzie suddenly understood were the name of the restaurant came from.

As expected with her tardiness of approximately fifteen minutes, everyone else was already assembled. Jane smiled in relief, when she caught sight of Lizzie and stood up to greet her little sister. Charlie did the same, while Caroline, clad in a rather revealing, turquoise dress just nodded with a hint of disdain, visible in her slightly wrinkled nose and the twitch of her lips. Darcy's gaze on the other hand seemed to be stuck somewhere at his wrists and, dressed in his typical button down shirt and a tie (thankfully not the one with the ducks), he also only nodded in acknowledgement, when she sat down between Jane and Caroline.

"My, my, Eliza", Caroline began with such a sweet smile that Lizzies teeth started to ache. "Is tardiness a common occurrence with you?"

"As long as the London railway system doesn't start to be punctual on a regular basis, there is nothing I can do about it, _Carol_", Lizzie retorted and flipped open the menu, the waiter had offered her. "The Northern Line had a power outage somewhere along the road", she added as an explanation when she saw Jane's questioning gaze. "Nothing severe, but delays as usual." Jane nodded, while Caroline with her mouth wide open looked at Lizzie in horror.

"You're taking the tube?, she asked appalled and Lizzie suddenly remembered why she disliked Caroline besides her usual bitchiness - her voice tore apart every tympanic membrane in her way and she meant that, _literally_.

Even Darcy seemed to cringe at her outburst, but the gaze he directed at Lizzie over the rim of his menu was just as horrified.

"Without a car there is no other way for me in this city to get from point A to point B, or is there?", Lizzie retorted with a smile. "Oh, don't be afraid, Carol", she added and patted the diamond clad wrist of the blonde in what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture. "They only take out the knifes when they are in the mood to play and it doesn't hurt so much after the third time."

Charlie laughed at her remark while Jane on Lizzies other side kicked her shin, which her sister only answered with a smirk, despite the pain coursing through her leg.

Darcy, just like Jane, also didn't seem to think her retort funny in any way, but he didn't resort to shin kicking (thank goodness) and just cleared his throat. "I was under the impression that you owned a car, Miss Bennet", he said stiffly and gazed at her out of dark, brooding eyes.

"Not mine", Lizzie replied simply, while perusing the menu – too many dishes with too many, too complicated names and way too high prices in her opinion.

"Oh, did you stole it, Eliza?", Caroline promptly asked and Lizzie, who'd hoped that she'd shut Caroline up for good, reluctantly looked up from the menu.

"Oh yeah, it was standing in front of my door on Friday and when none of my neighbours were looking, I broke in the window and short-circuited the engine", she answered with a grin, which faded into a sigh when she caught Jane's facial expression. "It belongs to a friend of mine", she explained, which promptly lit up Caroline's pale blue eyes.

"Oh what kind of friend?", she purred and waggled her eyebrows.

"A _friend_", Lizzie stated explicitly, wishing that Jane was for once not thoroughly occupied with perusing the menu together with Charlie. "I can't tell you his name, because I fear, that Darcy would probably fill out a complaint because of parking-lot theft."

"You know well enough, Miss Bennet, that such a statutory offence does not exist", Darcy replied without looking at Caroline, who seemed to be eating him up with her eyes alone, a circumstance, which caused a great deal of satisfaction for Lizzie.

"It sounded quite different on Friday", Lizzie teased and directed her irritatingly green eyes at Darcy in a somewhat successful imitation of Caroline's antics. She smirked and bit back a laugh, when the professor began squirming awkwardly on his chair and tugging on the knot of his tie.

"Found something you like?", Charlie chimed in a that moment, his and Jane's cheeks conspicuously flushed.

Caroline seemed to deem this a successful change of topic, because she loudly began to lament the fact that she could eat naught but salad at this restaurant when she wanted to keep her figure and that in no way someone should take the self-made pasta dish, because that one was just a mass of undiluted calories.

Lizzie, who had been thinking about taking a salad, basically because she'd already eaten Chinese for lunch, decided on the pasta dish on short notice, just to see how Caroline would take that.

She was more than surprised when Darcy chose the same.

After the waiter had taken up their orders and brought them their drinks (wine for everyone but Darcy), there was a lull in the conversation and Lizzie, wanting to avoid another of Caroline's pointed remarks, started asking questions about Jane and Charlie's trip to the furniture store and listened to their discussion about new lamps and interior designs with which they wanted to improve their apartment.

Caroline seemed to find this topic way more interesting than Lizzie and threw herself fervently into the discussion about whether or not new lamps in the dining area were a good idea.

Lizzie saw the desperation in Jane's eyes, while Caroline, gesturing wildly with her glass of wine, explained to her with a sluggish growing voice the advantages of Venetian glass – Lizzie suspected that this wasn't the first drink, Caroline had consumed that day. Jane smiled and nodded but her gaze scurried towards her little sister in a silent plea for help and Lizzie tried to find a topic in order to distract Caroline, when she caught Charlie's eye, who just nodded wordlessly before raising his voice and effectively cut his sister off.

"And how are you, Lizzie? Did you finish your essay on time?", he asked with a smile and placed his hand on Jane's, who grabbed it gratefully.

Lizzie also smiled, while Caroline turned back to her glass of wine with a huff. "Everything's finished and ready to be printed", she replied and winked.

"So fast?", Darcy asked and looked up from his phone, behind which he'd effectively hidden ever since the waiter stole his menu.

"It was already finished this morning", Lizzie explained with a shrug and took a sip of her wine. "It only needed to be typewritten."

"Why didn't you say that before, Lizzie?", Charlie cried out, clearly focused on keeping the conversation alive in order to get Caroline away from his girlfriend. "Then I wouldn't have had to beg your professor for a little bit of free time."

Lizzie grinned mischievously. "I just wanted to see if good ol' Darcy has a heart", she replied and with a slight jangling of her earrings, she threw back her head a little.

Charlie snorted. "It would have been easier to just kill and dissect him", he said with a grin, which Darcy only answered with a slight raising of an eyebrow, before he, as if sensing the danger, opened his phone again, when Caroline leaned in to him.  
"Jane, are you absolutely sure that your boyfriend really isn't some Mafia killer?", Lizzie asked and shook her head. Jane laughed and squeezed Charlie's hand, who also fell into the laughter.

"I'm a paediatrician, Lizzie. Get used to it."

"Just like everyone else has to...", Caroline muttered into her glass of wine and created one of these absolutely wonderful silences, that always feel like someone just deflated some balloons. Darcy and Charlie were looking disapprovingly at Caroline, who just stared at the red liquor in her glass, while Jane helplessly but silently asked Lizzie for advice. The girl with the green eyes just sighed before grabbing Caroline's glass of wine (practically ripping it from her tight grip) and exchanging it with Darcy's one, which was filled with water.

"To many calories", she simply said, when Caroline stared at her, mouth agape and with glassy eyes like some kind of drunk Barbie. "You better drink some water if you want to stick to your diet plan."

Caroline made some helpless gestures towards Darcy, but he, with his incredible presence of mind, had gulped down the rest of the wine and placed the glass out of her reach, deliberately ignoring her outstretched hands, which made her look like some sullen child, whose lolly he'd just stolen.

"How did the study go?", Jane asked, trying to distract everyone from a sulking Caroline, who stared at the spot on the table, where her glass had been previously. Charlie looked at his girlfriend in silent adoration.

"Oh, it went well", Lizzie replied. "I got my whole head covered with gel and Charlotte was so mean to use up all the hot water in the boiler, but other than that all went according to plan, the electrodes were all working and the presentations went without a hitch."

"Oh, that's good", Jane said and smiled.

"Yes, it is", Lizzie muttered and thought about George, the vampire-guy, who'd given her his phone number, after she'd said, she couldn't remember hers. The receipt, where he wrote it down, was still in the back pocket of her jeans.

"What kind of study are you talking about?", Darcy suddenly asked and when Lizzie looked up, she caught him staring at her blatantly.

"EEG", she replied curtly, her mind still thinking about the fucking receipt in her jeans at home. All the while Charlie was staring intently at his sister's slightly lowered head, as if he could make her see reason this way - his mental powers were absolutely frightening.

"The one from the Internal Medicine department?", Darcy asked, an eyebrow raised, and Lizzie felt something tighten in her stomach region when he looked at her. "But their participants are all well over sixty, if not older."

"Perhaps Lizzie forgot to tell us something", Charlie joked but his smile was forced.

"No", Lizzie replied without taking her eyes off Darcy. "Not medicine, I -"

But she wasn't able to finish that sentence because right at that moment the waiter came with their meals and Caroline finally raised her eyes from her plate, when the salad bowl was placed in front of her – Lizzie thought she looked like some disillusioned rabbit and she was only waiting for Caroline's eyes to start rolling like a freaking bowling ball.

During the meal Jane and Charlie kept the conversation alive with their discussion about their plans for tomorrow and they invited both, Lizzie and Darcy, to visit Kensington Gardens with them. Both of them declined, Darcy because he pretended he needed to work and Lizzie because she had no inclination to spend another day watching the lovesick couple, when the only buffer was Caroline or even worse, _Darcy_.

In the meantime Caroline seemed to revive again, the few lettuce leaves, she picked up from her plate and shredded in her mouth seemed to fulfil their part.

"And Lizzie", Charlie asked after a while, during which he and Jane discussed the manifold activities a couple could indulge in at Kensington Gardens, while Darcy attacked his pasta with a scowl on his face and Caroline picked leaf after leaf up and chewed on it. "Do you know what you want to do when you've finished your medical degree?"

Lizzie, who'd just picked up some noodles with her fork, looked up and shook her head. "Sorry, Charlie, but I don't really have a plan."

"Why doesn't that surprise us?", Caroline muttered, which brought her some icy glares from both, Charlie and Darcy, while Jane furrowed her brow and Lizzie only shoved some more pasta in her mouth.

"Do you know which part of medicine you want to specialise in?", Darcy asked and she felt his gaze on her.

"In no way it will be research, that's for sure", Lizzie replied drily. "Or the academic path for that matter." She winked at Darcy. "Sorry."

The professor only acknowledged the remark with a curt nod.

"Do you have any preferences concerning the different possibilities, Lizzie?", Charlie asked, all the while observing Caroline out of the corner of his eye.

"Hmm, let me see, Paediatrics is definitely up front", Lizzie mused with a smile, slightly swaying the glass of wine in her hand, which Caroline watched with a rather hungry expression on her face. "Eventually Neurology, but I'm pretty much open for everything."

A snort. "We know that..." Again Caroline who leaned towards Darcy in a conspirational manner.

"Perhaps you should drink some water, Caroline", the professor simply suggested and with a disapproving glare, handed her the glass of water, which the blonde the blonde woman took with a flutter of her eyelashes and a husky "Thank you, William". Oh yes, Caroline Bingley was back under the living.

"Don't you have a training phase soon, Lizzie?", Jane asked, drawing reassuring patterns on Charlies palm.

"Yeah, there'll be a lot of people from different hospitals this week, who will tell us all about the different training possibilities they have", Lizzie explained with sparkling eyes, while picking up some more noodles.

"Do you have any preferences concerning hospitals?", Charlie asked with a smile, his gaze always scurrying towards Caroline.

"I take what I can get", Lizzie answered, which resulted in another snort from Caroline. Lizzie grinned and wondered how long it would take until Caroline's throat was sore from all the snorting she did.

"Really, I'm not picky." Snort.

"I don't care, who wants me." Snort.

"I'll just go for the highest bidder." Another snort but this time Caroline choked so unfortunately on it that she started coughing and gasping for air. Lizzie patted her on the back with a sympathetic smile, while Darcy gave her another glass of water.

"Na, Na, Na, Caroline, you should really get some lozenge if your cough doesn't get better. It sounds really bad, you know", Lizzie remarked, patting her another few times on the back, which brought the coughing blonde's face dangerously close to her massacred salad.

"Lizzie", Jane hissed and grabbed her sister's other arm. Lizzie looked up and arched an eyebrow. "What's up, hun?"

Jane just looked at her warningly and with a roll of her eyes Lizzie refrained from further pats on the back, while the blonde tried to regain her senses. Charlie in the meantime looked like he had no idea if he should rather laugh or scream and Darcy thought it best to make a bit of conversation.

"So you don't have any plans regarding your future, Miss Bennet?", he asked and Lizzie swore by all that was holy, he raised his freaking eyebrow only so high to provoke her.

"No", she replied and directed her sparkling green eyes on his face, the blueish light at "_Heaven's_" drew sharp, unknown shadows across his face and for a moment it only seemed to consist of rough edges and strange angles. "I want to finish my degree and do my residency at a hospital, that's for sure. Other than that, I don't know, but I think I have enough of this thing called time to make such a life altering decision, don't you agree?"

"It's never too soon to make plans, Miss Bennet", Darcy retorted and placed his fork and spoon neatly next to his empty plate. He was already finished, she noticed in astonishment, while she didn't even manage half of it.

"Fine, Darcy, then I start right now if you freaking want me to. After finishing my degree, I'll go back to Africa. Are you satisfied?" She stared at him, a silent challenge in her eyes and even though he opened his mouth to answer her, someone else was even faster.

"A-Africa?", she heard Jane's shaking voice and Lizzie turned around in surprise to see her sister, white as the concrete wall behind her, she'd dropped her knife and fork with a clinking noise and looked at Lizzie with big blue eyes. "Why Africa?"

* * *

**A/N: Uh, didn't I tell you it was a cliffie? Upps! However, the next chapter is approximately twice the lenght of this one, so it will take some time, I think (or not, because I really like the next one;) If you want to get an idea what it's about, listen to "Soul on Fire" von EMA (Cover of Danzig), need I say more?  
**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and that my english wasn't so bad, thanks to all those who read, review, follow and favourite and as always:**

**Reviews appreciated!**


	9. Chapter 8 A Dinner Part 2

**A/N: Oh hey I'm back! Sorry for the delay, I'm back at Uni for a few weeks now, but I did a lot of travelling and all that stuff, besides this chapter is fairly long, as are the next two chapters (next one is over 13000 words, I'm sorry) before we reach the limit of my prewritten stuff and updates will get fewer because I have to write the german stuff first (I told you it's a work in progress:) and seriously, I don't know how much time I'll have until August...**

**Thanks a lot for all your reviews and your overal support (the best reaction to the last chapter: wonderwoman1970: Lol;) seriously, it made me laugh;) **

**If you want to get an idea how Lizzie and Darcy look in my mind, imagine a _young_ Nina Hagen (she's a german punk singer with an incredible presence and personality) with a lot less make-up and green eyes (seriously, check it out on google:) and for Darcy, imagine that croatian doctor from ER (so Goran Visnijc) but that's only a rough idea;)  
**

**IMPORTANT!:**

**This chapter deals with drug abuse, if this is a sensitive subject to some of you, I'm sorry, I tried my best to be accurate and tried not to hurt anyones feelings... however leaving it out would mean not writing this story, so if I offend you, don't read but I'm always open to constructive criticism;)**

**Okay, I know I get a bit dramatic, but you have to read and check out this music before reading, because otherwise some things won't make sense;)**

**Hotel Song - Regina Spektor (Important if you want to understand the Darcy/Lizzie conversation about fear;)**

**Soul on Fire - EMA (like I told you last tim, it's really important, just listen to it while reading:) **

**Disclaimer: This chapter is so AU, I think it's safe to say, a lot of it comes from my head, the rest... you know whom to thank and praise for it;)**

* * *

**Chapter 8: A Dinner Part 2 Of Bad Karma And Even Worse Trips  
**

Lizzie Bennet had known that this was a fault.

She'd known it the moment the barely intelligible announcement had sounded throughout the underground-station Camden Town and the destination boards had started blinking madly. Power outages were never a good omen. Short-circuits, maintenance work, even engineers, who suffered electro shocks while working on the power lines, all that was bad karma and she should have taken both her head and her feet, marched back into her apartment, screwed Charlotte and her bad moods and Craig's shooting games and hid under her freaking blanket till all of this was over and done with.

But she just had to be stubborn, headstrong even and therefore waited for the freaking underground train, while playing DoodleJump on her mobile-phone, only because she couldn't take disappointing her sister.

_Damn Jane and her fucking puppy eyes!, _she thought growling, when she stood up and marched over to the dance-floor. They were only a few couples dancing on the slightly higher platform from which the waiters had removed the tables and chairs, stumbling and swaying to music, which was neither fast enough for erratic movements nor slow enough to waltz.

But it was loud, drowned out everything and she couldn't hear him even though she knew he was not far behind her. She turned around and stared at his chest, because his head was towering thirty fucking centimetres above her and she winced, when he put a hand around her waist.

_Fine_, she thought and gritted her teeth, placing her fingertips on the side of his ribcage while taking his outstretched hand with the other and forced herself to raise her chin and look up.

_You can do that_, she urged herself on and with a sudden jerk of her head, green met black.

"_Devil-girl you must burn..."_

A dark, dark colour with no end whatsoever.

* * *

"Africa?", Jane asked, her bright blue eyes big and round like saucers. Lizzie felt how the heat left her face and ran down her neck, when she disentangled herself from Darcy's eyes and looked at Jane.

Charlie's gaze was worried and scurried from one Bennet-sister to the other, the fork with some rocket impaled on it, stopped mid-way, while Caroline seemed to have found a new favourite topic, because she watched the scene with renewed interest.

"It's not sure, Janie. Nothing's sealed", Lizzie tried to reassure her sister. The bad conscience she felt for becoming so provoked by Darcy that she'd said something so thoughtless, took over and she patted Jane's bare forearm. "It'll also take a while until I'm finished with Uni, you know that."

"But then why do you say things like that?", Jane asked and in the strange light at the restaurant, she looked again like the little, six-year-old girl, who'd asked her mother why the kids at the playground where so mean to her.

"It's not important", Lizzie tried to appease her and smiled a bit cautiously, which Jane only answered with another furrow of her brow. Lizzie sighed. "Mus called me a few weeks ago in order to persuade me to come with him for a short trip this summer. We started talking as always and he mentioned that his organization was still desperately seeking new doctors for their programs and he pointed it out as an alternative for me." Lizzie shrugged, while shredding her pasta to pieces with her knife and fork. "You know Mus, Janie."

"But of course", Jane said a bit hollowly, her lips tightly pressed together. Lizzie sighed.

"And?", Charlie asked, desperate to continue the conversation. "Are you going to travel to Africa this summer with Mus, or whatever that guy's name is?"

Lizzie turned to him, while still observing Jane's pale face out of the corner of her eye. Charlie's cheerful expression was utter guileless and bore no second thoughts, but Lizzie was still wondering how much exactly he knew.

She shook her head, but before she could formulate an answer, Caroline interrupted her with her usual shrill and screeching voice. "Africa?", she cried out. "What are you talking about, Charles? Who's going to travel to Africa during summer? That's nearly as trashy as Miami during that season! All that sweat and dirt! Not to mention the bad sanitary facilities!"

"I can assure you, the facilities there are up to the standards of every European hospital", Lizzie replied with a smile. It had been one of Mus' biggest projects and the one he was the most proud of, because it had taken years of sweet-talking to politicians and rich business-people to finally realize something that would decrease the infection rate drastically by some simple means of hygiene.

Caroline just snorted and Lizzie concluded that she probably wasn't really good at learning lessons.

"So you are going to fly over to Africa?", Charlie asked, the smile around his mouth a little too tight to distract from his agitation.

Lizzie shook her head. "I wanted to, but the travel dates collided with finals, so sadly it won't happen."

"I'm sorry", Charlie replied sympathetically and Lizzie shrugged. "If I'm lucky, it'll work out next year. If not, I'm going to use one of my training phases for it."

"You are aware of the fact that theses phases are supposed to provide you with new experiences, Miss Bennet, aren't you? But this won't be the case if you repeatedly work for one and the same organization", Darcy interjected and a quick glance to the side told her that he was still staring at her. Did he have problems with his neck or something?

"Yeah, because Africa is something, that becomes a routine pretty fast. Like _really_ fast", Lizzie replied and rolled her eyes.

"Well, I can't imagine flying over to Africa that often!", Caroline cried out and placed her hand on Darcy's forearm in what was supposed to be a gesture of support.

"Who's talking about flying, Carol?", Lizzie grinned. "We're taking the boat of course!"

"The boat?!", Caroline echoed and various other guest at the neighbouring tables looked up in irritation. "How can one take the boat?! William, darling, say something! She just can't take the boat to Africa!"

"William, darling" didn't seem to appreciate this way of address, because with an expression on his face, that would be appropriate for the dissection of an insect, he pried Caroline's claws from his forearm – Lizzie wondered if her nails would leave scars – and put another glass of water in front of her. "I believe that Miss Bennet was not speaking the truth, Caroline", he said stiffly and avoided the rather desperate looking pale blue eyes.

"Sure, Darcy", Lizzie replied with a grin and raised her glass as if to toast. "We don't want it becoming a routine, do we?"

"Honey", one of the next addresses, Caroline threw at Darcy to his complete and utter misery, was spared an answer, because the waiter came to collect their plates and Lizzie suddenly realized that she was the only one, who hadn't finished her meal. Nonetheless, she put down her fork and spoon and when Jane glanced at her in silent worry, she assured her that she'd already had Chinese for lunch. Her reply seemed to draw a smile out of Jane and she asked Lizzie in a more relaxed manner, if the reanimation had worked to which Lizzie just smiled.

The music became louder, a mix of classics and alternative-rock-bands and the waiter began to remove the furniture from the dance-floor. Lizzie saw Darcy's expression and wondered if he was aware that "_Heaven's_" regularly became a night-club after half past ten. A very expensive, pretty elitist night-club of course.

Caroline began begging Darcy for a dance the minute Charlie escorted Jane to the dance-floor so that they could dance to a cover-version of James Blunt's "_You're beautiful_", but not before providing some conversation for the leftovers, when he asked Darcy with a glance towards Lizzie, what he thought about Africa.

"It's hot", was Darcy's unbelievably eloquent answer to the question, which Lizzie didn't even deem with a response and what kind of conversation was complicated by the loud music, was utterly destroyed by Caroline's tirades.

Lizzie spend her time alternately sipping on her wine and watching Jane and Charlie dancing cavity-inducing-sweetly together, while Charlie whispered sweet-nothings in her ear, which had her sister blushing furiously within minutes.

Yeah...Lovebirds... it was nauseating.

Then suddenly Caroline stood up, when all her begging and whining proved to be unsuccessful to soften the iron grip Darcy seemed to have on his heart (or whatever machine was pumping the blood through his veins), and made her way over to the bathroom to "powder her nose" as she put it and Lizzie didn't doubt her even though she probably wouldn't need cosmetic products for _that_.

What surprised her greatly on the other hand, was Darcy's deep, raspy voice sounding way closer to her ear than she was comfortable with, when the professor leaned forward and whispered darkly: "Don't you dance, Miss Bennet?"

She looked at him in surprise. "I never thought, I'd hear such an accusation from you of all people, professor."

"I'm not aware in how far my dancing habits are influencing yours, Miss Bennet", Darcy replied with a slight twitch around the corners of his mouth.

"Ah let me see... it's just this teeny tiny word called "hypocrite"." She smiled sweetly and the green flared up under her lashes.

The twitch grew a bit stronger and the slight scratching of his voice in her hear sent shivers down her spine.

"Why are you calling me a liar, Miss Bennet?"

She chuckled. "Why ever do you think, I'm talking about _you_?" Darcy just looked at her. "Oh, fine!", she huffed. "Besides your dancing habits, I distinctly remember you declaring that you don't drink alcohol."

"That's true."

"And what about this little incident earlier?", Lizzie asked and raised an eyebrow.

"Damage control", Darcy replied, his face a mask made of stone and ice.

"Interesting..." She nodded. "You do have an explanation for everything, don't you?"

"I think I'm not the only one fitting this description", Darcy retorted, his lips contorted into something one would normally interpret as a kind of dry smile. "But I think you're only disappointed that I'm not some alcohol addict."

"Yeah", she grimaced. "Every student dreams of their professors being freaky junkies of some kind."

"Universal justice?"

"Easier to get rid of."

Lizzie looked at Darcy and risked a grin, but the professor just gazed at her intently.

"Would you like to dance?", he finally asked with a straight face and Lizzie had to bite her lip in order not to laugh out loudly at the absolute absurdity of the scene.

She threw her head back and her earrings clinked like wind chimes. "No, thank you, Darcy, but I'm not that desperate."

"Do you need to be desperate in order to dance with me?", Darcy asked, his brow furrowed. Uh, someone got his ego ripped into pieces...

"Nah, just more than tolerable and not a pain in your posterior", Lizzie retorted, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

He was silent for a few beats, a dark, brooding enigma to her right and she tried to ignore the goosebumps, that were creeping up her arm. These bloody traitors...

"So you've heard."

Lizzie smiled and took another sip of her wine. "A bit of advice, Darcy. Never insult people if you're not sure that your target is out of earshot."

"That's the third advice you gave me, Miss Bennet."

"Follow them like you did with the rest, Darcy. They're free, I won't charge you for them." She cocked her head and observed the man with the gloomy expression next to her. "To be honest, I'm surprised you counted them."

The professor laughed at that and the sound confused Lizzie for a moment. "You should show human emotions more often, Darcy", she then said with a smile.

"Advice number four?", the professor replied without batting an eyelash.

"They could mistake you for a real human being."

"And not for a robot?"

Now it was Lizzies turn to laugh out loudly and she threw her head back so that her earrings grazed her shoulders. "Admit that I got you, C3PO."

"Star Wars?", Darcy asked and folded his napkin neatly together before placing it in just the right distance next to his glass. "That's precious. Really precious."

"I thought I should choose something more fitting to your generation, professor. Wouldn't want to risk a culture shock, right?" She grinned.

"And Star Wars is my generation?", Darcy asked and arched an eyebrow.

"You recognized C3PO", Lizzie deadpanned and took another sip of her wine.

"And what does your knowledge about Star Wars tell us about you?"

Lizzie lifted both eyebrows. "That I got some crazy flatmates", she replied and Darcy was saved an answer by Charlie and Jane, who came back flushed and beaming to the table.

"Where's Caroline?", Charlie asked immediately and began looking for her.

"She's in the bathroom", Lizzie replied, when Darcy refused to answer. Charlie's eyes darkened considerably at her words and he gazed at Darcy, who nodded curtly.

The blonde man pressed his lips tightly together, before whispering something in Jane's ear, who also nodded gravely and they both sat down.

"You two should go dancing", Charlie suggested to Lizzie and Darcy and pointed towards the dance-floor. "The music is fantastic."

"Oh, but of course!", Jane chimed in and smiled encouragingly at her little sister. "You like this kind of music, right?"

"That's true", Lizzie replied still smiling, feeling more and more like some loopy crazy Buddha-version – she definitely spent way too much time with Anne – but made no attempt to escape.

"You like this kind of music?", Darcy asked and she took a deep breath, forced herself to ignore him and his opinions about her taste in music. She felt like a saint, literally.

"Miss Bennet?" She looked at Jane and tried to find something, anything to talk about with her sister, but Jane's gaze scurried from her to Darcy and back in an endless circle. "Lizzie", she said, a silent threat in her voice and Lizzie sighed in defeat. She really needed to free herself from the power Jane had over her life.

"I heard you the first time, Darcy. I just didn't want to give you the satisfaction."

"What satisfaction?" He honestly seemed confused.

"The glee, you must surely feel surging through your veins, when you can make fun of my tastes, Darcy."

"I think you mistake me for someone else, Miss Bennet. Besides, you've already lectured me about your taste in music on Thursday."

Lizzie smiled a bit lost in thought. "That I did."

"So why aren't you dancing?", Charlie asked, brow furrowed.

"Miss Bennet doesn't seem to be in the mood for dancing at the moment", Darcy replied tersely, his face expressionless.

"Oh, I'm not in the mood for a lot of things today", Lizzie murmured in her glass of wine, ignoring the bewildered expressions of the people around her.

"What are you talking about, Lizzie? You love to dance!", Jane cried out, her tone rebuking while her eyes were pleading.

"Of course, Janie, I love to dance", Lizzie repeated, the same expression of blessed equanimity on her face.

"Then why aren't you dancing?", Charlie asked, caught somewhere between confusion and amusement.

"Yeah, why am I not dancing?", Lizzie asked innocently and took another sip of her wine.

"Are you afraid, Miss Benent?" Darcy leaned forward, his dark eyes piercing into hers.

"What should I be afraid of?" She looked at him questioningly.

"Well, I can think of no other explanation for your reluctance to dance with me." He'd pressed his his palms flat against the table and she wasn't sure if she just imagined the smile playing around the corner of his mouth.

"I'm afraid of a lot of things", Lizzie replied, her face suddenly hard. "But dancing is not one of them." Her gaze scurried to Jane and Charlie, who were watching them closely. "I'm not afraid", she repeated, more emphatically this time. Charlie smirked.

"So then why don't you tell us, what you're actually afraid of?", he asked and leaned back in his chair.

Lizzie sighed and rolled her eyes. "Of orca whales and owls", she replied, without looking any of them in the eye.

Jane and Charlie were silent, but she thought, she heard something like a laugh coming from Darcy.

"Pray tell, Miss Bennet", the professor demanded to know. "Do you often dream of strangers wearing your clothes or waking up in hotel rooms and getting caught with cocaine?"

"Sometimes", Lizzie said vaguely and looked at Jane, but her sister just shook her head smiling.

"You shouldn't always copy your playlists on my iPod, Lizzie", she said amused. "Then perhaps I would have believed you."

"See, Miss Bennet, I think you need to restore your credibility, don't you think?", Darcy's voice sounded to her right and when she looked up, the professor was already on his feet and had reached out for her hand, just right when, accompanied by hammering basses, a new song began.

"_Angels fall to earth... world heats down...cool..."_

"Fine", she said and ignoring his hand, she marched directly towards the dance-floor.

"_Devil-girl you must burn..."_

"Who told you, I would dance with you?", she asked despite the loud music, the basses and the voice describing the apocalypse.

"_...burn at the touch of the autumn's crest..."_

"So you wanted to dance alone?" He arched an eyebrow. She shrugged.

"I would have found someone."

"I don't doubt that", Darcy replied tersely and she suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at that and decided to just leave him to his impressions. Fucking, judgemental idiot.

"Why the change of mind?", she asked instead, trying to ignore the burning hand on her waist. Darcy just gazed at her intently and seemed to prefer silence.

"Oh, that's what I call fairness", Lizzie observed with a shake of her head. "You can't just retreat into your cloak of silence or whatever it is that you call it when you two are alone and I have to answer every single inane question."

"You could also just find topics, which focus on anything but my past behaviour", Darcy suggested while spinning her around.

"_You gotta wait on the samhain of my soul..."_

She cocked her head slightly. "Oh no, that would rob us of approximately 90 percent of our current topics", she threw back. "Sorry, Darcy."

"_I'm gonna bring your world down in fire..."_

"So you think, we have no common interests? What about university?

"Oh, believe me", she pirouetted right under his arm. "You don't wanna go there. If we start that discussion we'll end up yelling or sulking on different sides of the room."

"I was under the impression that our normal difference in circumstances do not affect us in private?"

"Wow", she said and opened her mouth in mock surprise. "It sounds so _dirty_ if you put it that way."

"Miss Bennet", Darcy admonished her and his eyes seemed, if possible, even darker. She tried to suppress the laugh, bubbling in her throat.

"I just think our opinions differ too much for a peaceful conversation", she then said and the female voice repeated the refrain before the volume rose.

"_You gotta wait on the samhain of my soul..._ _I'm gonna bring your world down in fire..."_

Darcy gazed at her, his eyes dark and unreadable, before his grip around her waist tightened.

"And what about music?", he asked, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth, when he pulled her towards him with a sudden yank and she was faced with his chest, only centimetres away from her. The white of his shirt lit up in the strange blueish light.

"_Come make me love in the house of ice, see you melt down more than once or twice, make you shake till worlds align, and see your body tremble with your blood on fire..."_

Lizzie gritted her teeth, forcing herself to look at Darcy despite the confusing closeness, which had her nerve endings trembling in agitation. _"...cause the season in my veins, well it's ready to burn, and the feeling of my body, gotta pray and learn..."_

She tried to control her facial expressions, dug her nails in Darcy's flesh to show him that she wasn't afraid. His face was towering above her, she felt his breath on her face, felt the warmth diffusing through the thin cotton fabric. He was even closer than before and she forced herself not to jerk back. _"Change all things that you ever seen and change all visions, kill all endings!"_

Darcy attempted to say something, but she wouldn't let him speak.

"Oh my goodness, what's Caroline doing over there?", she suddenly cried out, when she caught sight of the blonde in the turquoise dress, arguing animatedly with her older brother.

She felt the tension radiating from Darcy, saw the muscles tighten, before he let her go.

"Excuse me", he said before making his way through the swaying couples, leaving a burning imprint on her skin.

"_You gotta wait on the samhain of my soul..."_

* * *

When Lizzie finally reached their table, Darcy was already there, deep in discussion with Charlie, while up front at the cloak room, Jane was trying to manoeuvre Caroline into an equally turquoise coat. The blonde was sulking and loud, completely inappropriate remarks were falling sporadically from her pink, lipstick-covered lips, while Jane used all her powers of persuasion with a furrowed brow.

Lizzie got closer and caught some pieces of the conversation between Darcy and Charlie.

"She wanted to get a cocktail and I told her it's enough... Jane tried to distract her, but... made a scene... don't know how she got enough to reach this state..."

Darcy just shook his head and looked disapprovingly at Caroline.

"Did you take a look at what she took in the bathroom?", Lizzie asked, standing next to Charlie with a worried look on her face, but he just shook his head.

"What do you mean?", he asked. Lizzie shrugged, her brow furrowed. "She was pretty quiet when she left for the bathroom and when it happened after she got back-"

"Miss Bennet, that's none of your business-", Darcy interjected, his voice dark and threatening, Lizzie ignored him, placing a hand on Charlie's arm instead.

"Charlie, you don't reach that kind of state solely through alcohol", she cast a glance at Caroline, who was now lecturing Jane about the best designer shops in London while cackling like a freaking manic. "She's not slurring and she's able to walk straight, but she's definitely high-"

"Miss Bennet!" Darcy seemed to boom and she forced herself to ignore him.

"Charlie." The blonde man flinched at the sound of the word "high". "Did you check her pupils?"

"That's enough, Miss Bennet", Darcy interjected and removed her hand from Charlie's arm by grabbing her wrist. "Take Caroline home", he advised his friend before turning around to Lizzie, who shrugged of his hand with barely concealed anger and a silent threat in her sparkling eyes. "Don't you dare", she hissed through clenched teeth.

The professor opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off by walking over to Jane, who was trying desperately to keep Caroline under control.

"You want to leave?", Lizzie asked Jane with a side glance to Caroline. Jane nodded. "It's probably for the best", she said and looked apologetically at her younger sister, who just shrugged.

"Eliza!", Caroline cried out right then and up close Lizzie could see, that the black of her pupils had completely taken over the pale blue of her iris'. "It seems like you've caught our dear Darcy!" Her voice shrilled in Lizzies ears, but she tried not to wince or grimace at the sound. Caroline snorted. "Probably just some teacher's fantasy..." She snorted again. "You'll see, little girl. Sooner or later he'll get tired of you and then... then he'll come back to me!" Her voice reached new heights at the last few words and Lizzie saw Jane biting her tongue while trying desperately to find a way to change the topic. "He always comes backs to me!"

"Don't you worry, Carol", Lizzie replied dryly. "I'm sure your fiancé will come back soon to plan your wedding with you."

"Right!" Caroline leaned a bit down to Lizzie. "I know girls like you, Eliza. Men need those little adventures sometime to see what they really need in life." She smiled condescendingly at Lizzie. "And that's not some little masturbation-fantasy."

Jane's face grew pale at Caroline's words and she was close to bombard Lizzie with apologies in Caroline's name, but Lizzie just smiled reassuringly and patted the arm of the intoxicated blonde. "I'm sure, you're right." She grinned. "Speaking from fantasy to fantasy of course."

She grabbed her jacket from the cloak room and wanted to say goodbye to Jane, but her sister wouldn't let her go.

"You're not going to take the tube in order to get home, right?", Jane asked her, the worry evident in her voice. Lizzie just shrugged while Crazy Caroline cried out the word "tube!" in delight and started another monologue about tooth paste.

"Why ever not?", Lizzie asked and furrowed her brow. "You and Charlie are living in the opposite direction and you have to take home little Miss Snowbird over there, besides it doesn't take long, only a few stations or so."

"But it's after ten!", Jane cried out. "And I'm sure Darcy can take you home."

"Exactly, Eliza", Caroline chimed in. "You can't go into those dangerous trains with all these poor and filthy people! They're going to mug you or worse, think you're one of them!" The thought seemed to disturb her greatly and she was silent until she processed the second part of Jane's reply. "But going with Darcy...No! I'm sure we can take her with us, Janie!"

Jane shook her head and started an explanation but Lizzie cocked her head and looked questioningly at the babbling blonde. "Pray tell, Carol, do you call these people "poor" because you think they have no money or because you feel pity for them?"

"What a question!", the blonde with the overly large, black pupils cried out, exactly when Jane's elbow met its target.

"Argh." Lizzie glared at Jane and rubbed her side with a furious expression on her face. "That was uncalled for", she hissed before Charlie and Darcy reached them and also grabbed their coats.

"Darcy?", Jane asked in her best "Jane-voice" and the brooding man looked up. Lizzie was seriously tempted to also push her elbow in between Jane's ribs for fairness and of course to distract her from her purpose, but she refrained from doing so because it would have been way to obvious.

Not to mention childish.

"Can you take my sister home? It's late and you're headed in the same direction."

"Jane, I already told you, it's no problem for me to take the tube", Lizzie tried to talk her sister out of it, but Jane wouldn't have it and gazed at Darcy with her big blue eyes. Yeah, that never failed.

He swallowed. "Where do you live, Miss Bennet?", he asked and looked over to Lizzie.

"Camden Town", the girl with the green eyes answered begrudgingly.

"Camden Town!", Caroline cried out in horror and Lizzie was sure, the blonde was going to faint.

"Caroline, that's enough!", Charlie interjected and tried to guide his sister out of the restaurant, but Caroline didn't seem to think this plan as desirable as her brother and clung to Darcy's free arm .

"Oh William, why can't you take me home?", she whined and looked up at him with her big black pupils, which made her look slightly spaced out.

"Because that would be completely absurd", Darcy said stiffly and pried her claws from his arm. "You're a guest at your brother's apartment, he'll drive you home."

"But who will bring me to bed?", Caroline cried out and pouted – Lizzie would have laughed if Jane's elbow hadn't still been a painful reminder. She swore her sister was a closet-sadist.

"Your brother", Darcy simply said and handed the reluctant blonde over to Charlie, who without a word and with such a frightening expression on his normally cheerful face pulled her out of the restaurant and over to his car.

Jane, Lizzie and Darcy looked at each other uncomfortably before they also made their way outside. Caroline was already in her seat, mouth wide open, vehemently discussing something or other with her brother and Lizzie saw her chance for a quick goodbye and an even quicker disappearance, when everyone's attention was focused on the screeching blonde for a moment.

But she hadn't counted on Jane and Darcy.

"Don't you dare", Jane reprimanded her sister, long before she could even utter the words "Until tomorrow then", at the same time as Darcy said "I'll take her.".

"Hey, did you gang up on me?", she asked a bit defiantly but refrained from pouting, after Caroline had so clearly violated that tactic before. "What's your bloody problem with the London railway system?"

"Your mouth", Darcy replied without batting an eyelash, while reaching for his keys. "And your manners."

"Jane!", Lizzie cried out. "You let him treat me like that?"

"You hit first, Lizzie", Jane replied with a twinkle in her eyes, before hugging her sister and admonishing her not to do any naughty things.

"Jane!", Lizzie cried out and if she hadn't been so hard-boiled, the thought about doing "naughty" stuff with her professor would have made her blush, but the way it was, it only disturbed her peace of mind.

Jane only laughed and waved before getting into Charlie's car, who pulled his shiny black BMW carefully out into traffic.

This effectively left Darcy and Lizzie behind on the pavement and the girl with the arms crossed over her chest didn't look a bit like she would set foot in her professor's black Range Rover any time soon.

"Are you coming?", he asked confused through the open window. Lizzie bit her lip and shook her head, her arms still crossed over her chest.

"My mum told me not to set foot in a stranger's car."

She heard him sigh. "I'm hardly a stranger, Miss Bennet."

"My mum said, they would tell me that too." She batted her eyelashes.

"Miss Bennet!" The exasperated voice of her professor raised a smile from Lizzie.

"I'm also not allowed to talk to strangers", she replied and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, while searching for her mobile-phone. Fuck, three missed calls, all from Craig... Hopefully there was nothing wrong... Who was she kidding? There was definitely something wrong over there.

"Miss Bennet, do I really need to call your sister?", the professor threatened and at least achieved that she looked up at him.

Lizzie sighed, before putting her phone back into the pocket of her leather jacket. "Miss Bennet!"

"You're not playing fair!", she complained before entering the car and shutting the door with a thud.

"Finally", Darcy muttered before starting the motor. Lizzie just snorted.

They passed a few crossroads in chilly silence before Lizzie remembered that it would irk him more, if she forced him to speak.

"That's a pretty big car", she remarked, knees pressed against the dashboard.

"That's true", Darcy replied, eyes glued to the streets. Lizzie laughed quietly.

"What's so funny?", the professor asked a bit indignantly and gazed at her for a quarter of a second.

"Nothing." She laughed again. "Only that most guys, I know, would jump at the chance to boost about their car and all its little gadgets, you know?"

"There's a manual in the glove department, if you're interested in such information."

"No, thank you very much", Lizzie replied and watched London at night passing by.

"Then why do you ask?"

"Just curious, how someone can come up with the freaking great idea to drive such a car in London of all places. Look, I mean, it's like being the bull in a china shop, don't you think?"

"Please speak only for yourself, I find this vehicle to be perfectly adequate."

"And this striking attribute persuaded you to buy this monstrosity in order to knock down innocent garbage cans?", Lizzie asked teasingly, some strands of hair had escaped the confines of her hairstyle and now tickled her neck.

"I bought it before I moved to London", Darcy replied and she felt the irritation radiating from him like radioactive waves. "I think you know that."

"Oh yeah...", she mumbled against the window pane. "Derbyshire... What's Derbyshire like?"

"Green", Darcy replied and Lizzie laughed.

"As green as Africa's hot?", she teased and looked at him with sparkling green eyes.

"And we're back to discussing my past behaviour...", Darcy sighed before turning left at the crossroad. "What's your problem now, Miss Bennet?"

"Only that you have a way to state the obvious."

"Someone has to to do it, don't you think?", Darcy retorted, his profile was silhouetted in sharp contrasts against the reddish-yellow light coming from the streets.

"And the man with the two doctor's degrees has to be the one?" Darcy laughed a bit bitterly.

"You've definitely done your homework, Miss Bennet."

"No, I'm just so unbelievably lucky to sit right in the middle of a very active network of dedicated gossips." She sighed. "Google makes your life soo much easier."

"And encourages stalking", Darcy added and passed by a red Opel Corsa.

"No, that's Facebook, Captain Obvious."

"Another nice nickname", Darcy replied. "Where do you get them from? Do you collect them in a box or something?"

"Oh my fucking goodness, he knows sarcasm!", Lizzie exclaimed and sat up straight. "My, my! One could mistake you for a real human being if you just optimize your motion sequences!"

"I am a human being, Miss Bennet", Darcy replied. "Please stop doubting that."

"Oh someone's getting a bit edgy now!", Lizzie cried and grinned. "Are you afraid the government's going to find and catch you?"

"Miss Bennet..."

"Pray tell, from which research establishment did you flee? The one about artificial intelligence or the one where they try to create some kind of superhuman?"

"Miss Bennet..."

"Because if it's the latter, then I have to tell them that they made some mistakes, unless they wanted to create a social retard, because then -"

"Miss Bennet, I'd advise you not to continue that line of thought." The professor's voice was menacing and she saw him gripping the steering wheel tightly.

"You know about freedom of opinion in this country, right?"

"Not when it includes insults, Miss Bennet. I could sue you for slander."

"And he's getting dramatic...", Lizzie muttered and rolled her eyes. Darcy didn't say anything and the part of her that was too fucking much like Jane, looked at her with big doe-like eyes and scolded her for her behaviour.

"Oh fine!", she muttered to herself, before turning around in her seat, watching the professor's stone like expression. "Hey Darcy", she whispered, her cheek pressed against the back of her seat. The professor turned to her, they were waiting in front of the traffic lights for the light to turn green. "I'm sorry", she said with a sigh and the professor just nodded.

The next few minutes passed in silence, only interrupted by Darcy's question about her address, which she quickly typed into the navigation-system.

"Why did you call me her fiancé in front of Caroline?", Darcy asked after a while of amicable silence.

Lizzie grinned. "You should always play along with the hallucinations of a mad woman", she replied and laughed even louder when Darcy groaned in annoyance.

"Yes, she's definitely hallucinating", he said and Lizzie half expected him to apologize for his past behaviour or give her any kind of explanation, but nothing came and she decided to call Jane the next morning if only to find out how her sister was coping with all of this.

It took some time until they reached Camden and some additional time until they finally got to the street, where Lizzie's apartment was situated. _Philip's_ was ablaze with light and groups of people were standing outside on the pavement, beer in their hands, laughing loudly and happily.

"What's going on here?", Darcy asked when he stopped on the other side of the road and the barely concealed disapproval in his voice made Lizzie's answer harsher than usual.

"Saturday is Happy Hour at _Philip's_", she replied and grabbed her bag. She was halfway out of the car, when she recognized one of the swaying figures in the half shade of the Pub.

"Craig!", she cried out, thinking about the missed calls and ran across the street over to the figure, who'd stretched out a hand in order to find something, anything to lean on to.

"Craig!", she cried out again. Some of the guests looked up, but most ignored the blonde man, who even though he wore jeans now, still had the Superman-T-Shirt on.

"Lizzie Bennet!", he said with a grin, when he recognized her and stretched out his other hand a bit helplessly as if to greet her that way. Lizzie took his free arm and held his foolishly grinning face with the other.

"Craig, what's up?", she asked but the guy in the superman-T-Shirt wouldn't answer her and just fell forward when he actually found someone to lean on to. They were both in serious danger to keel over and they would have if Darcy hadn't come up to them at that moment and kept the blonde guy upright. Lizzie hadn't noticed him following her. Weird.

"What did he take?", Darcy asked through gritted teeth, while holding a swaying Craig in place.

"I don't know", Lizzie explained, before grabbing Craig's head again and forcing him to look her in the eye. "Craig, hey Craig..." She tried to find the familiar green-brown iris', which seemed to disappear between his half closed eyelids and she tried to hold them with her own green ones. "Craig, what did you take?", she demanded to know and caressed his cheek and forehead. "Come on, Craig, just tell me...just fucking tell me!" But the blonde guy just blinked and smiled blissfully.

"Argh, that's not going to work!", Lizzie ranted and turned around to face the club. "Marley!", she yelled, banging against the window next to them and startling the guests. "Marley!"

"Whaz up?", a female voice barked, before she opened the window with the colourful pane, Lizzie previously had used as a punching bag. A woman in her fifties with long grey hair in braid stared at them, a cigarette in one hand.

"Marley, what did he take?", Lizzie demanded to know, Craig's face still in her hands.

"I don't know", the woman named Marley replied and took in Craig's state with a worried expression on her face. "I've seen 'im smokin' and drinkin' some pints but it's pretty fuckin' crowded in there and I couldn't see 'im the 'hole time."

Lizzie growled in frustration. "Are Forster's guys there?", she asked her, ignoring Darcy's iron mien.

Marley nodded darkly. "I told 'em to do their freakin' shit outside, but ya never know what they've hidden in their red hoodies." She cursed. "That was the bloody last time, I let myself get sweet-talked into allowing them back into my club. Stupid, bloody Forster! Makin' an exception for those shitheads!"

"It's not your fault, Mar", Lizzie replied, biting back those angry tears burning in her eyes while gazing into Craig's happily smiling face. "You couldn't do anything about it."

"I damn well could!", Marley shouted, her piercing blue eyes squinted in anger. "It's my fuckin' Pub and my fuckin' rules and anyone who disobeys, will have to face the consequences!" She cast another worried glance in Craig's direction. "You think he'll make it?", she asked, her brow furrowed, looking from Lizzie to Darcy.

"'Tis nothing a good night of sleep won't cure ", Lizzie replied with a small smile. Marley nodded. "You're a good gal, Lizzie-Bee", she said sympathetically. "Takin' care of your friend like that."

Lizzie nodded. "But not good enough to keep him from taking this shit in the first place." She shook her head and did so even more vehemently, when Marley started protesting.

"Leave it, Mar, I know whose bloody fault this mess is and it's not only because of the Forster guys."

Marley just nodded and after a quick goodbye, she shut her window again.

"Shouldn't we find out what exactly he took?", Darcy asked, after Lizzie had wrapped Craig's free arm over her shoulders and with Darcy's help walked him to the entrance of their apartment building.

"Not necessary", Lizzie replied, while trying to grab her keys, an endeavour which Craig's weight around her shoulder rendered nearly impossible. "Forster's guys always sell the same shit."

"Still, he belongs in a hospital", Darcy persisted and Lizzie suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

"So that they can add this to his medical history and inform the police?", Lizzie asked sarcastically and finally managed to get her keys in the lock and opened the door. "Nah, don't think so."

"He would be under medical supervision while he sleeps off his... intoxication."

She bit her lip in a silent attempt not to lash out at him and switched on the light in the hallway. "I'm his medical supervision."

"You're a student", Darcy replied sharply. "What are you going to do if he starts hallucinating and wants to jump out of the window in the middle of the night?"

"Goodness, Darcy, he took some morphine pills not fucking ecstasy!"

"M...", babbled Craig. "Haha... M!"

"See?", Lizzie added and the strange trio walked in the direction of the staircase.

"And what about additional effects due to the alcohol?", Darcy asked while they dragged Craig up the stairs to the second floor.

"Bloddy hell, Darcy, I know Craig and I know his states of intoxication, he'll sleep it off and wake up tomorrow with one hell of a hangover!"

"Did he ever get checked because of long-term damages?" The guy just wouldn't stop and Lizzie was severely tempted to ask him if _he_ ever got checked because of said damages, but refrained from doing so when they reached the front door of Craig's apartment.

She reached for Craig's keys in his pocket, letting them appear like magic in her hands, then worked herself diligently through the wicked lock and into his apartment.

Lizzie switched on the light. Some empty fast food boxes, a bunch of wires, two motherboards and a few bottles of coca cola greeted them standing on the small table in the kitchen or lying in the sink,

"Over there!", she said and pointed at the door leading to Craig's bedroom. They manoeuvred their charge through the small kitchen and the equally small door frame and Lizzie escaped a sigh when they finally dropped Craig on his bed, which was flanked by a bunch of broken laptops and other electronic garbage. Yeah, talk about Feng-Shui.

She tucked in Craig, who practically fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillows, before walking back to the kitchen, Darcy in tow.

"It's cramped", the professor remarked, while she filled a glass with water from the main and downed it with one gulp.

"Welcome to the living hell of a student's life", Lizzie heard herself say in reply, while she stood there leaned against the kitchen counter, thinking about the hundred and one ways she could kill and torture Forster's guys. Not in that order of course.

"It's dirty", Darcy replied, his face a mask as if he was just stating the obvious and not insulting her and her life with every word.

"Thanks a lot, Captain Obvious", Lizzie mumbled and rolled her eyes. Why couldn't he just leave?

"You'll sleep here tonight, I take?", the professor asked and cast a scrutinizing glance at their surroundings.

"Yes", Lizzie simply said, pressing the cool glass against her lip.

"Do you live here, too?", he asked, his eyes glued to Lizzie, who shook her head.

"I'm living down the hallway", she answered, staring at the postcards someone had plastered across the wall next to the calendar. At least two of them were from her, sent from one of her trips to Africa.

"Then why didn't you take him there?", Darcy questioned further, as if they were playing Twenty-questions and about to make out when they were finished. Screw that, not going to happen, she thought.

"Didn't you see the sock over the handle?" At the absolutely _clueless_ expression on the professor's face she laughed a bit hollowly. "Uni-times are long gone, what?"

Darcy kept staring at her stoically and she refrained from elaborating her answer any further. Silence surged between them and Lizzie wondered, when the hell he was finally going to leave, when Darcy cleared his throat.

"Unfortunately I have to tell you that because of the repeated use of prescription medicine it's necessary for your friend to visit a psychologist." Darcy's eyes were hard when locking with Lizzie's absurdly green ones. Her mouth fell open.

"Are you fucking serious?", she cried out and crashed her glass down against the counter top.

"Miss Bennet, I assure you, considering the circumstances-"

"Craig doesn't need a fucking headshrinker!", Lizzie exploded, curling her hands into fists while taking several steps in the professor's direction.

Darcy didn't back off, just took in her obvious fury with hasty movements of his dark eyes. "Miss Bennet, I'm absolutely sure about the necessity of such a course of action and-"

"The only thing, Craig needs, is a little more fucking tolerance." She pressed her thumb and index finger tightly together and held them in front of Darcy's face. "Only a bit more tolerance and he could lead a freaking happy life without taking those shitty pills to survive on a daily basis!"

"Miss Bennet, that's exactly the point, he needs help, professional help, which you cannot provide and-"

"You have no bloody idea, what he needs!", she cried out, her fists only millimetres away from his face. He grabbed them, held them suddenly and both were at loss for words.

She felt the warmth, his warmth around her wrists, saw his dark eyes holding her green ones in place and she felt something inside of her awaken. A slight pull under her navel, a tickling somewhere deep in her throat, she breathed in, breathed in his scent.

"Miss Bennet", Darcy whispered, his face inches away from hers. That was all it took.

"Get out", she mumbled, her eyes still caught in his and when he didn't react immediately, she ripped her wrists out of his grip. "Get the fuck out of here!", she cried with all that was left in her and created as much distance between them as was possible in the small kitchen.

"Miss Bennet, I'm-"

"Go away!", she yelled and ripped open the door. "Miss Bennet, perhaps I should stay here, just to-"

"Go!", she simply cried and she was so freaking close to shoving him out of the apartment by herself that her hands shook violently. Darcy finally seemed to get that and capitulated, leaving the apartment with an iron mien and hands raised in silent defeat.

"Just go", she mumbled and leaned tiredly against the closed door. She could hear Darcy's steps and how they reluctantly moved away. _Finally_.

She would have fallen asleep there against the door, this whole day had drained so much of energy, more than she'd been aware of, and she was so close to oblivion but the pins in her hair kept her awake.

"Wretched, fucking little pains in the ass", she cursed, taking out the little culprits and walking over to Craig's bedroom, where she lost her shoes, socks and tights before she crawled under the covers clad in only her T-Shirt and underwear.

She thought about what she shouted at Darcy, that Craig only needed a bit more tolerance to be happy. _Who_ _doesn't_?, she mused with a sigh and wrapped her arms around Craig's waist, pressing her face in his neck, thinking that if she just entwined herself close enough around him that she could protect him.

From all the evil ones out there, who didn't understand what beauty was and wanted to destroy it in their ignorance.

From all the monsters under the bed and in the real world.

* * *

**A/N: First: THIS IS NOT HUNSFORD! just thought I'd mention it :D we're roughly at the Netherfield Arc... whatever... Hunsford will be a lot more... dramatic... take Long Live the King and multiply it by seven... just to get an idea...  
**

**So yeah... that's it... next one is a long one with some information about Lizzie's past... But about this one: Did you like it? Lizzie? Darcy? Caroline? I always wanted to get Carol a little more depth and to thicken their plot (ya know, why Charlie and Darcy keep up with her:) **

**However, let's do a little challenge: find out what Carol is addicted to and I'll think about a reward;) **

**See ya, next time!**


	10. Chapter 9 Coffee Days - Sunday

**A/N: _Dear anonymous reviewer,_**

_**Thank you very much for your exceptionally kind and thoughtful review to my last chapter, I'm pleasantly surprised you even read that long, considering you think my Lizzie to be the worst adaptation of Elizabeth Bennet you ever saw (my interpretation of your words, I'm sorry if I don't mince them, like you so obviously did). **_

_**I don't know what the purpose of your review was, despite trying to insult me. Was it constructive criticism? Your urge to tell me of your antipathy towards my story, because I couldn't make it without this input? Your desire to improve my writing? I'm sorry if your cryptic message wasn't some kind of revelation for me, it made me laugh and costed me some time to read, translate and delete it, minutes I will never get back. I won't charge you for the laughs I had at your expense, I deeply apologize if that offends you, like my other writing seems to, but you couldn't honestly expect to get away with writing some scathing remarks about my story and not get some laughs about it from a Jane-Austen-fan? You're hilarious. **_

_**Oh and thank you for the lesson in languages, I though my computer was having some kind of virus at first before I recognized the Cyrillic letters. Google Translators and my friend had a lot of fun translating it for me, so feel free to write me in any language you want to. I speak German, English, French and Latin and also a bit of Spanish, I also work my ass off to do a proper translation of my works, but if you want to write to me in Russian, feel free to do it. **_

_**Anyway, I'm tired of defending this story to people, who don't like my characters, my language and my version of Lizzie. I warned you all beforehand. She's what I think Elizabeth Bennet would have been in a modern context, she's crossing borders, she's edgy and witty and different. This Lizzie has been through a lot. **_

_**Putting Austen's Lizzie in a modern context would be fucking boring (excuse my language, I know it offends you), because she would just disappear in the crowds of polite, slightly funny, average women, so you have to transform her proportionally and that's what I did. **_

_**But if you don't like it, I fucking never forced you to read it in the first place! **_

_**I apologize for the crass language, it just had to get out,**_

_**Sincerely, **_

_**meandmyinsanity**_

**So! We do things a bit differently this time! Sorry for the letter, it just kind of infuriated me and robbed the fun of writing from me for some days, not because of self-doubts, but rather because I'm not writing for people, who obviously have fun insulting someone else, someone doing a hell lot of work next to studying to keep this story flowing. **

**But then there were all these nice reviews, the follows and favourites and I just had to start writing again, so this is for you, my lovelies! I told you the next chapter would be big and in the german version I wrote it in one rush, over 20 pages, but at the moment I'm in a hell lot of stress and so I decided to split it. The original covers four or five days, each of them about seven word pages long. So let's split! Each chapter/day starts with some lyrics, credentials are added there, I advise you to listen to the songs, but as always, I don't force you, so don't hate me. **

**Oh and yeah, wendywho got Carol's addiction, it's cocaine;) I had to laugh at the description when I did my research because one of the effects of cocaine is overt sexuality and non-stop talking, so yeah.. funny! I'll think about a little reward if you want one;) **

**Anyway, here we go!**

* * *

**Chapter 9: Coffee Days - Sunday**

Sunday

"_Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones and I will try to fix you"_

_Fix you, Coldplay_

_I'm missing you, just for the sake of missing you, _Lizzie wrote on top of the white blank page, right under the date.

_It's hard to admit it, _she continued. _With all this chaos and fever around me, the people, the noises, the running from one place to the other, I often forget all the small things and then, when I pause for just a moment, it all comes rushing back to me, like waves against the coast, incessantly, inescapably, like a tsunami taking me with it, but when I open my eyes, the waves barely touched my feet. _

She chewed on the pen in her hand, her hair falling loosely over her shoulder, grazing the paper with the yellowish tinge and she paused, browsing the other, neatly written pages full of words in the old, tattered notebook, words, which were anything but lies.

She hid the book under Craig's mattress, together with the pen and the inkwell. Partly to get it out of Charlotte's sphere of influence and partly because this was the only place, where she could be honest with herself.

And that was the whole purpose of this book.

_It's raining and the raindrops here are so similar, yet so different from home. They seem to be bigger, brighter, more precise than the raindrops there, they hit their target if they want to. _

_Back then, rain made me feel peaceful, a deep warmth in my bones, when I lay next to you and we watched the rain outside, these thin, fleeting threads, knocking with the temperament of a sullen child against the window pane, undirected, like a sprinkler in summer in comparison to the storm raging here, when the floodgates open._

_But perhaps that's just the restlessness in me. _

She set down the pen, looking up she breathed in the reassuring scent of freshly made coffee.

It was still early, eight o'clock at most, she had no clock to determine the time, but the sun was up and Craig was still sleeping.

His face, half covered by the pillow and the mess of blonde locks on his head, was strangely peaceful. It would've unsettled her, if his steady breaths weren't audible in the silence.

She didn't lie, when she told Darcy, she knew Craig and his states of intoxication, she did, but it didn't keep her from waking up several times during the night, checking if he was still breathing, if his skin was still warm, if his heart was still beating.

Shed slipped off one time and when her cheek had made contact with the cool linen of the pillow, she'd nearly jumped up in panic – it had taken over fifteen minutes until her heartbeat had gotten back to normal.

She knew it would've been the more prudent decision to take Craig to the ER, but her best friend trusted her and she couldn't risk loosing his trust.

Her gaze shifted from the boy next to her towards the cup of coffee on the windowsill to her right.

Round about seven o'clock she hadn't been able to sleep any longer and after half an hour of lying there and staring out into the murky, cloudy grey, London was covered in during the rain, she'd finally gotten up and tiptoed into the kitchen, careful not to make a sound, even though she knew that nothing, not even a heavy metal band in his bedroom could wake Craig up.

After inspecting the cupboards, knowingly not touching the bottles with the coca cola label (an experience, she had no desire to repeat ever again), it had been her choice to either drink some coffee together with a couple of gherkins or the electronic garbage, Craig kept in his fridge (the other alternative had been sneaking back into her apartment, but it hadn't been nine yet and therefore the apartment hadn't been safe territory (the sock was a warning one should, just like the coca cola bottles, take seriously)).

Lizzie decided on a cup of coffee.

It was a surprisingly good decision, because all the deficits Craig's kitchen possessed concerning groceries and general hygiene, it made up with its coffee selection.

And while the water was heating up, Lizzie hid Craig's complete supply of Advil and other medications in a white plastic bag in the cistern of the toilet.

She pressed the pen against the last ink-stained word. _...the restlessness in me..._

She took another sip of her coffee, hiding her bare feet under the blanket, softly humming along the music in her head, while counting the raindrops on the window pane.

_Do you remember the rain, the day we lay next to each other in your bed? The incessant crackling, not loud enough to drown out neither our minds nor our breaths and I still know how hard my heart was beating, because you were so close. It nearly hurt. _

_You lay behind me, my back pressed against your chest, our legs, knees and feet entwined and we were so close even through the layers of clothing separating us. _

_Your fingers were playing with my hair, silly, little games of tugging and stroking and I still remember the sudden flutter of fear in my stomach, when your other hand suddenly moved under my shirt. _

There were too many, way too many raindrops, blending and blurring, running down the pane so confusing that Lizzie's thoughts soon drifted back to the evening before, back to Darcy and the way he looked at her when she kicked him out of the apartment. Shaking her head, she continued writing.

_You must've felt how afraid I was, how nervous, how painfully tense my body was, because you just pressed your lips against my neck, while your hand drew circles on my skin. And I wanted to, I wanted to jump so badly, to say yes, to just take the risk, be a fucking grown-up, but I couldn't. _

_I didn't want to disappoint you. _

"_It's okay", you said and withdrew your hand. "We've got time." Then you were silent and we just lay there, watching the rain, while you played with my hair, as if it was so natural, as if being with me was second nature to you. _

_Do you know that I loved you for that? _

She furrowed her brow at the last words, the sentence was unplanned, it just poured out so easily, so...

_Every time it's raining here, I want to run, I want to dance and scream and tear at my hair, shouting that I loved you and that it's not fucking fair._

_The rain here has nothing in common with the one at home..._

_But it reminds me of you. _

With one finger Lizzie traced the way of the raindrops over the glass, it was cold outside, her breath covered the glass with condensation. A silent reminder that she was still breathing, still living, still there.

_When I told you, I'd like to dance in the rain, you just wrinkled your nose and patted my head like I was a little child talking about a fantasy world. _

"_You'll only get wet", you said and it wouldn't have taken much more and you'd have pinched my cheeks like my aunt sometimes did. "And your make-up will suffer. Do you want that, Dorrie?" _

_I shook my head, not daring to say more and you smiled, your brilliant, wonderful, sparkling smile, that tasted like peppermint. _

_Do you know I never wore make-up before you told me it looked good on me? _

_Do you know, I hated it when you told me what to do?_

She pressed the pen against the paper, harder than before when she wrote the next sentences and it nearly broke under the pressure.

_Do you know I loved you regardless?_

With an angry outcry she threw away the pen, leaving spots of black ink on the white blanket. She rubbed her temples tiredly.

Talking about it sucked every bit of energy out of her, drained and drowned her and she rarely did it. Sometimes, only sometimes, when the words and pictures in her head threatened to overwhelm her and she felt like Dumbledore with all these memories and feelings and sentences swirling around in her mind, searching for this one solution, this one sentence, explaining why all of this happened, only then she grabbed the worn-out leather-bound volume, trying to drag the memory like a silver thread out of her mind.

No one besides her knew about the book, she didn't even tell Anne, not wanting to repeat the age-old discussion about why running and the endless search for a solution wouldn't help her get clear with the situation. Craig on the other hand was only interested in his coffee and electronics as a part of his apartment – Lizzie at one point had made it her task to change his sheets once in a while, making his bed the perfect hiding place for her little secret, because he'd never even think about taking a look under his mattress.

She bent forwards, trying to reach the old pen, she bought at a garage sale years ago. It was a bit chilly in the apartment and she took another sip of her coffee before continuing.

_Admitting that I miss you is hard. I can admit small things, secluded memories of rain, your skin under my fingers, the way you kissed me, the way you smiled when you walked me to my classes. I can admit that I miss your laugh, your embraces, the way you held me. I can admit that I miss the feelings, the fluttering, the pins and needles, the burning and the pain – I can miss parts of you, but I can't miss you, because that would mean forgiveness for... _

"What's...time?", she heard Craig's voice muffled against the pillow and Lizzie hastily closed the book and put it back to its hiding place under the mattress.

"Too late", she answered and grabbed her cup.

"Urgh", he groaned again and turned to lie on his back, grimacing in pain. "Can ya' get me some... Advil?"

"Nope." She smiled at him innocently. "No fucking way, buddy."

"At least coffee?" Craig tried to blink, but soon gave up when his eyes realized that there was way too much light in the room for his bloodshot eyes.

"Forget it", Lizzie replied, holding the cup out of his arm's reach.

"Please... Lizzie?", Craig groaned and winced at sound of his own voice. "Now's... not the time.. for lectures..."

"I'm not lecturing you", Lizzie said with a grin, watching Craig with evident amusement from her sitting position next to him.

"Then get me the meds!", Craig demanded and buried his face in the pillow.

"Move your lazy ass and get them yourself", Lizzie said in response, taking another sip of coffee.

"You're drinking _my_ coffee", Craig protested, his voice barely audible through the down feathers, but Lizzie Bennet, world champion when it was about understanding the inebriated pillow-language, understood him either way. She started humming again.

"You can't sing", Craig mumbled through the pillow. Lizzie trilled a particular high note and burst out laughing. "I'm an awesome singer!", she protested.

"Yeah, just believe everything your shower's telling you", the guy with his head drowned in the pillows grumbled, loosing the last few syllables on the way through the feathers.

"It's my biggest fan ", Lizzie replied with sparkling eyes and hummed another few notes.

"Argh!", Craig cried out, palms pressed against his ears in a bit uncoordinated manner. "I swear, Lizzie, I'm going to fucking kill you if you don't get me those meds soon!"

"Death threats are not really impressive if you can't even raise your own head, honey, not to mention a real, grown-up gun for adults", she replied good-naturedly. "Also take care who you try to intimidate. I still owe my Mum a phone call and if I tell her, what you did yesterday, she'll give you one of her lectures." Lizzie cleared her throat before continuing in a high pitched voice: "Young man, are you out of your senses? How dare you take something like that from these scallywags! I may remind you that-"

"Oh god", Craig groaned in defeat. "Please don't."

"Hey, you can take the credit for that!", Lizzie replied rejoicingly. "I mean how dumb-"

"Lizzie, leave it", he warned her, his hands curled into fists. His knuckles where white against the sheet.

"I mean you _know, _how absolutely crackbrained Forster's guys are, so why the bloody hell do you take that shit from them? That's just fucked up!"

"Lizzie, just mind your own damn business, okay?" Craig didn't even look up and Lizzie grimaced before gritting her teeth.

"What a great idea!", she exclaimed. "So the next time these mentally retarded idiots provoke you, I'll just let you sleep it off on the bloody pavement, deal?"

"It would be way quieter on the pavement", Craig simply mumbled and Lizzie smacked his shoulder, which caused a gurgled outcry from Craig.

"You would have frozen off your toes on the pavement." She kicked him in the side with her feet. "And some external reproductive organs. Not to mention, getting _mugged_." Another kick. "Stamped _down_." Kick. "_Raped_." Kick. "Or left to _choke_ on your own _vomit_." She kicked him one last time, with all the pent up fear and panic of loosing him, of another overdose, of another night in the waiting room going crazy while waiting for news of him.

"Uh, god, Lizzie... that's assault!"

"Yeah, my shoulder hurts, too, you mindless _bastard_", Lizzie replied dryly and took another sip of her coffee.

"What the hell...?", Craig managed to get out and finally turned around, so that Lizzie could catch a glimpse of a blinking brown-green eye, covered by messy blonde locks. "What's up with your shoulder?"

"How do you think I got you up here?", Lizzie asked and raised an eyebrow. "Wingardium Leviosa doesn't work with you, little Muggle."

"Perhaps because you've got no magical powers, _Muggle_" The green eye disappeared again.

"Oh, that's why I can't keep you from taking that shit!", Lizzie cried out and stamped her foot on the mattress. "Thanks a lot, buddy."

"Lizzie..."

"You could've told me that sooner, ya' know?", she teased and leaned down to Craig with a mocking grim expression on her face. "Because I just would've gone to Hogwarts instead of picking you up from random streets in the middle of the bloody night."

"Yeah, Yeah, Hermione, the guilt-trip won' wor' with me", he mumbled and covered his head with his arms.

"Why do drunk people always mix up syllables?", Lizzie suddenly asked and tilted her head to one side.  
"Why don't ye jus' shut the fuck up?", Craig asked exasperated.

"See?" She grinned "I'm wondering if there's a logical reason behind it, or if it's some kind of discrimination."

"Mus' be the discrimination", Craig mumbled. "Sounds so fuckin' reasonable"

"Yeah, don't you think?" She beamed before looking down at Craig and placed her cup on the windowsill.

"Craig?" She leaned down, brushing some wayward strands of hair behind her ear. "Craig..."

"Uh?", was the only sound he made in response, followed by something akin to a nod and some grumbling.

"Craig?", she leaned down further, slowly freeing her bare legs from the blanket. "Crai-aig..."

"Uh, Lizzie, what the -" But he didn't have the time to continue that line of thought, because that was the exact moment, Lizzie chose to throw herself on top of him, laughing and tickling, while Craig nearly jumped in the air in shock.

"Fuck, Lizzie, what the bloody hell?!", he cried out, gasping for air, while Lizzie, still laughing, slung her arms around his neck and didn't even think about letting go.

"I'm sorry to tell you, but you just didn't deserve to sleep any longer", she declared sweetly, when Craig, having regained his senses after the shock, fell back onto the mattress.

"Can I get at least some painkillers now?", he asked through the pillow.  
"Nope", Lizzie replied, her face buried in Craig's neck. "You know the rules, Craig. No painkillers if it was more than-"

"Alcohol...Yeah I know", Craig grumbled. "It's a stupid rule."

"It's not stupid", Lizzie complained. "It's only fair. If you decide to take that shit, you have to face the consequences."

"It wasn't a fair voting", Craig protested. "Isn't that normally part of a democracy?"

"It was two against one."

"Oh, you know damn well that you can get Charlotte to do anything you want", he threw back, turning on his side with Lizzie still clinging like a koala bear to his neck.

"No longer", she sighed, not even thinking about letting go, even though her climbing frame now tried to sit up. "She has blackmailing material now."

"So perhaps we should think about revising this rule", Craig said and stood up abruptly, but instead of falling back down onto the bed or hitting her jaw most inelegantly on the floor, Lizzie simply slung her legs around Craig's hips, waiting until the guy in the Superman-T-Shirt regained his balance.

"But that wouldn't be fair", she complained, while Craig made his way into the kitchen. "A voting is forever!"

"I want my meds _now_, Lizzie!" He started going through his usual hiding places. Craig thought he was _so_ clever, hiding the packages always at different places as if he could fool _her_, but Lizzie had developed something like a sixth sense for finding the important stuff in this apartment. Which was one of the reasons, Craig wasn't able to find anything.

"Lizzie, where are the painkillers?", Craig asked and tried to look at her over his shoulder, but Lizzie simply held on tightly and giggled like a little girl.

"Why don't you try to find them?", she managed to get out laughing, her head buried in his neck.

"Grr", Craig grumbled and opened the front door, a screeching and protesting Lizzie on his back – the cold air in the hallway causing goose-bumps on her bare thighs.

"Argh, Craig, what the hell are you doing?", she cried out and tried to jump down, but now Craig was holding her legs in place, robbing her of every possibility of running back into the warm apartment and to her coffee.

"You can get back in if you tell me, where the meds are", Craig explained and dumped her without much ado in front of her own apartment.

"Craig, you can't do that to me! It's not even nine yet!", she cried out, picking herself up pretty quickly, before holding the blue sock (one of her own, Lizzie noticed to her utter horror) from the door handle under his nose.

Craig just wrinkled his nose. "Do you want to tell me something?", he asked, hands on his hips, staring down at her.

Lizzie snorted. "Over my dead body."

"As you wish", Craig replied and marched back into his apartment, shutting his door with a thud.

"You'll never find them!", Lizzie cried after him, before sinking down on the cold floor, her back pressed against the wall opposed to her apartment, sulking. She took the sock and put it on her right feet, using it as a resting place for the left one. "Never!"

She killed the time until the front door of her apartment would open (she'd left her keys in the bag, that was now waiting for her in Craig's kitchen in between a sea of coca cola bottles), reciting the names of all 206 bones in the human body, staring at the ceiling and counting the dots there. Occasionally she would answer Craig's loud curses about not finding his meds with replies of her own, ranging from "Hey, sunshine, wrong direction" to "It's getting warmer, princess", but at some point she'd gone through every tiny bone, she could think of, even those in her fingers and toes and Craig's curses died down, when he, as Lizzie suspected, went back to bed.

What a _sluggard_.

Right when the cold tiles threatened to become seriously uncomfortable (there was no heating in the hallway and she only wore a T-Shirt and her underwear – screw the sock, it was utterly useless), the front door to her apartment suddenly opened and a slightly dishevelled guy in jeans and a black leather jacket exited it, stopping in surprise when he caught sight of Lizzie.

She practically leapt up, not even trying to cover her bare legs and the pink Hello-Citty undies, instead she simply crossed her arms over her chest, glaring challenging at the intruder (the sock gave her a surprising air of dignity).

"You finished?", she asked with a raised eyebrow. The guy simply nodded, clearly speechless and with a huff and a sweep of her hair she marched right past him, shutting the front door with a loud _bang_.

"You're scaring them", Charlotte's voice sounded from the kitchen and when Lizzie walked into the small room seconds later, she found her flatmate sitting there with her mouth full, consuming a package of cream slices with obvious pleasure.

"What a pity", Lizzie commented with a furrowed brow, loosely braiding her dark locks before switching on the water boiler. "Couldn't you've given me both socks to wear? You know, to make a pair and all that."

"Socks over door handles aren't supposed to be worn, Sweetheart", Charlotte replied, wiping away some leftover cream from the corners of her mouth. She had this strange habit of eating cream slices after sex, one reason why there was always a package in their fridge.

"Believe me, it was kind of an emergency solution ", was Lizzie's muffled reply, whiles she inspected the contents of the fridge, absently tugging at the sock, pooled around her ankle.

"Does that mean you waited like that in the hallway?", Charlotte asked horrified, sounding decidedly ridiculous with her mouth full of cream slices.

"Craig kicked me out", Lizzie explained tersely, wondering whether or not scrambled eggs with chocolate cream was a good idea.

Charlotte burst out laughing. "Did you stole his meds again?", she asked, taking another bite of the cream slice in her hand, the white cream pouring out between her fingers and Lizzie grimaced.

"I didn't steal them", she clarified. "We have a rule."

"It's a stupid rule."

"It's a good rule", Lizzie disagreed, pouring the boiling water over the instant coffee powder. "An important rule. No painkillers when-"

"-it was more than alcohol", Charlotte repeated with a bored expression on her face. "We know it."

"Then I don't get, why the bloody hell I need to repeat it all the time!" She grabbed one of the frying pans out of the cupboard and closed the door with a thrust of her hip.

"Sexy", Charlotte commented the move (the morning after, she always sported the attitude of a lascivious actress from the 1920's, lacking only the cigarette between her lips and the obligatory red lipstick).

Lizzie threw her a cheeky grin over her shoulder before she began cracking some eggs for her breakfast.

"Why didn't you come into the apartment?", Charlotte asked, opening the last of the cream slices. "It's like Antarctica out there in the hallway, honey. Didn't you freeze your pretty little ass off out there?" (She also tended to dramatic arts in this state).

"It wasn't nine yet and I didn't wanna risk seeing you two getting frisky on the breakfast table." Lizzie grimaced at the memory of that surprise.

"Oh _yes_!", Charlotte moaned with a rapt smile.

"Charlotte!", Lizzie cried out in horror, intuitively taking the frying pan from the stove. "Where?!"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"So that I don't place my food, where your ass has been mere moments ago!" Lizzie stared at her flatmate aghast, holding up the pan in a silent threat.

"Not in the kitchen, so chill, okay?", Charlotte reassured her, both hands raised in defense.

"I will hope so", Lizzie mumbled grumpily, placing the pan back onto the stove. "And you better clean up whatever mess you made, okay? I don't want to get nightmares."

Charlotte rolled her eyes, but nodded.

"Did Craig pop some pills yesterday?", she suddenly asked, playing with the packaging foil and Lizzie felt her muscles tense at her words.

"Yeah...", she answered quietly. "Darcy and I found him in front of _Philip's_."

"Wait!", Charlotte cried out. "You and Darcy? Mierda! What the fuck happened?"

"He drove me home at Jane's insistence", Lizzie explained reluctantly. "We found Craig passed out on the pavement, dragged him up to his apartment and I kicked him out when he wanted to get him into some hospital or psychiatry." She shrugged. "He left me no other option."

"Does Craig know, you defended his honour?"

Lizzie cast a giggling Charlotte a menacing glare and rolled her eyes.

"However", she continued. "We need to teach Forster's guys a lesson." Furiously she quartered the eggs in the pan and added some salt to their wounds.

"Oh No!", Charlotte cried out in horror and nearly fell from her chair when she raised her hands in protest. "No, No, No! Take me out of that! I'm not going to play along with your little, convoluted revenge plans, you know exactly how that ended last time!"

"Don't worry, Char. Last time was an exception, it won't happen again", Lizzie explained, her mouth half full with scrambled eggs, waving the spatula through the air.

"We waited for five hours at the fucking police station until Craig was sober enough to rescue us!", Charlotte cried out, her hands hanging half forgotten in the air. "Five hours!", she repeated as if Lizzie didn't hear her the first time she screeched it.

"You're such a softy!", Lizzie complained, filling her plate with the rest of the eggs. She wisely left out the chocolate cream.

"Lizzie, forget it, okay? If you've got a problem with Forster's guys, then that's your business, but please by all that is holy, leave me the fuck out of it, gotcha?"

"Charlotte, you bloody well know, what they did!", Lizzie cried out and slammed her plate on the table.

"In my opinion it takes two to play the game, darling. One idiot to sell the shit and another one to buy it."

"Charlotte!" She felt the anger surging through her veins, the same anger, that threatened to overwhelm her yesterday during Anne's trial run and she grabbed her plate, a silent reminder not to start screaming again. "You know the redcoats and what they do, what they say to Craig. So don't act like they're just some harmless idiots selling drugs for the sheer fun of it!"

"No one forced Craig to take that shit, okay? He's a grown-up and can take care of himself, got it?", Charlotte replied with a grim expression on her face. This argument about Craig was kind of a sensitive subject for the both of them and one they never came to an agreement about. "Acting like he's a little kid won't help either one of us!"

"And what's your plan? Watch him drinking and drugging himself to death, because he can't cope with whatever it is, that's bothering him?", Lizzie asked and the plate in her hands trembled.

"Lizzie, he's an adult for fuck's sake. You can't tell him what to do. It's his life, his decision!" Charlotte's mien was inscrutable when she said this, only her clenched fists betrayed her agitation.

"Craig doesn't even manage to get back to his apartment when he's intoxicated, Char. If I hadn't found him, he would have slept on the bloody pavement!"

"Surely Marley would have found him", Charlotte disagreed, waving her hand dismissively.

"That's not an argument!", Lizzie said grimly. "However, I will be damned if I let Forster's guys get away with this."

"What's your plan?", Charlotte asked and despite everything, Lizzie could sense the curiosity in her voice.

Lizzie smiled mischievously. "It's a surprise", she said and began eating.

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**So yeah! A bit different Lizzie and some insight... Tell me what you think! Next one is about Anne... *grins* it's special (you'll get the cross-over) Anyway, did you get the nickname? It's important!  
**

**Reviews appreciated!**


	11. Chapter 10 Coffee Days - Monday

**A/N: So, wow, thanks a lot for all the support and the incredibly kind words! You had me smiling the whole day;) And thanks, Julianabr for all the warm and fuzzy feelings;) Thanks also to all those silent readers, who gave me words of support, you're amazing! **

**So this one is a short, but important one, therefore I upload it seperately, the next one is much longer, I promise;) **

* * *

**Chapter 10: Coffee Days - Monday**

Monday

"_So tell me now... where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart?"_

_White Blank Page, Mumford and Sons_

When Lizzie finally found Anne after receiving the most cryptic text in the history of cryptic text messages, the amber girl was sitting Indian style on the small stone wall in the backyard of the social sciences building, her eyes glued to the knitting needles and balls of wool in her lap. The scarce sunlight, creeping up behind the curtain of hazy clouds, shone directly in her face, illuminating some reddish strands in her dark, spiky hair, making her look like she was on fire.

Throwing her frog green bag with the red felt roses on the free space next to Anne and placing her cup of coffee on the other side, Lizzie climbed up the small wall and, with her head in Anne's lap, sank down on the hard sand stones with a sigh.

A mischievous smile tugging at her lips, she balanced her cup on the hard curve of her ribcage, blinking into the blinding sun behind her overly large sun glasses with the green Smileys on yellow background.

"Hi", she sighed, smiling blissfully while the sun induced endorphins surged through her veins, basking her body in this drug-like state of warmth and contentment, supported by the high amount of caffeine, that made up sixty percent of her blood picture at the moment.

Anne didn't show any kind of reaction and slightly confused, Lizzie squinted her eyes to get a better look at her friend. There was a crease in Anne's brow, her lips tightly pressed together and even though the amber eyes tried to avoid Lizzie's green ones, they always scurried back to the group of girls, Lizzie greeted earlier – She could hear their laughs faintly in the wind.

The sound made Anne flinch, she blinked before she started knitting even faster and she cursed when the yarn got tangled up between her fingers.

Lizzie frowned. Anne didn't curse. Never. She'd tested that for sure, by provoking and angering her early in their acquaintance, stealing her books and balls of wool and hiding them under mattresses or in the dishwasher, but Anne never did more than simply arching an eyebrow and looking at her with an amused expression on her face, asking her to please tell her next time, when she wanted to play hide-and-seek in her apartment.

That this group of girls should upset her so much, was so completely out of character for the ambergirl that a sudden uneasiness in the pit of her stomach caught hold of Lizzie, danced up her fingers and spine and she lifted her sun glasses and her head in one motion, trying to get a better look at whoever it was, that seemed to unsettle Anne so.

Three girls were standing at the other end of the yard, laughing and gesticulating wildly, bags and coats hanging over their shoulders, an air of excitement surrounding them.

"It's just Lou and Hetty with the new girl", Lizzie stated and nodded towards the three girls. One of them had long, strawberry-blonde locks, cascading down her back, creating a wonderful contrast to the forest green dress, she wore. She was the one making all the wild gesticulations, while the other, blonde one with the short hair and the blue coat watched her with bright eyes, eagerly adding something or other, when she could get a word in.

The attention of both girls was directed at the third girl. She was slim, with shoulder-length, jet-black hair, falling sleek and shiny down onto her collarbones. Her eyebrows, like a pair of raven's wings, bestowed a certain kind of expressiveness on her face and she had a long, straight nose over a small mouth, contorted into a light smile, when the antics of the redhead became even more agitated.

The girl wore a white blouse and black, skinny jeans and her eyes were hard and unrelenting, always focused on Anne, when Lou and Hetty didn't demand her attention. The raven-haired girl frowned when she noticed Lizzie's scrutiny and abruptly turned her attention back to her companions.

Snorting Lizzie fell back and her brown locks, lighting up in various shades of gold, poured over Anne's legs and her knitting like a damn waterfall. The ambergirl saved her work without looking up from the intruding strands of hair.

"What's your problem with Mus' daughters?", Lizzie asked, angling one leg to get herself into a better position. Her washed out, black jeans showed a lot of cuts and holes, one of them directly over her knee and the skin beneath it caught the sunlight in an ankle, that made it light up golden, too.

"I've got no problem with Mus' daughters", Anne replied mechanically without looking up, her eyes scurrying back to the group for some fleeting seconds. She bit her lip painfully hard and resumed her knitting.

Lizzie peered at her, but the ambergirl refused to meet her eyes. Moving her head to the side, she noticed something crinkly under all the layers of hair.

"Take one", Anne said, when Lizzie pulled out a bagful of gummy bears from under her head and shrank back when she was promptly faced with a steaming cup of coffee right under her nose.

"Drink", the girl behind the huge sun glasses prompted, waving the cup with her favourite coffee-mix a bit so that the scent would hit her nose. Anne frowned, but took a sip.

"Hazelnut", she commented and shook her head slightly in confusion. "But I still don't understand..."

Lizzie simply laughed, taking the cup back and chewing on a handful of gummy bears before she cast a look at the dark-haired girl, whose posture had become even more rigid.

"You did that on purpose!", Anne cried out, her golden eyes wide open. She curled her hands into fists around her knitting, her gaze travelling back towards the group like a fucking magnet.

Lizzie simply grinned, a red gummy bear caught between her teeth and placed her cup of coffee on the Hardrock-Café-emblem on her loose black shirt.

"Why?", Anne asked soundlessly, her eyes cast down onto her knitting – socks, Lizzie suspected, judging by the looks of the red and blue curled stocking in her lap.

She didn't say anything, simply drumming rhythms on the rim of her plastic cup, softly humming a melody, that lost itself in the wind, when the gate squeaked and the girls' laughs drifted away.

"_...and can you kneel before the king",_ she murmured. _"...and say I'm clean..._ _I'm clean..."_

"Please, Lizzie, not that song", Anne pleaded her quietly, her voice strained and choked and if the blinding sun hadn't been there, Lizzie would've sworn she saw tears in the ambergirl's eyes.

But that wasn't possible.

"It's her, right?", Lizzie asked softly and with a tentative smile, which quickly turned into one of sympathy.

"It's her", Anne whispered, her eyes still glued to her knitting, even though her hands had stopped moving. They were trembling.

"But the name..." Lizzie frowned. "I mean, she's a pretty _girly_... girl..."

"Her father was a marine."

"And I wondered, why the hell you always called her by her last name...", Lizzie muttered and shook her head.

"It's not her last name." Still no eye-contact, the usually sparkling gold of her eyes was no more than a pale, subdued brown.

"It's not her last name?", Lizzie exclaimed. "What, did you guys made that name up for a private joke of some kind?"

"Her mother named her after her father. They weren't married and when he died, she wanted to honour his memory by giving his name to their daughter in a way." Anne shook her head and bit her lip – Lizzie figured that it had to be bleeding right now, judging from the way she maltreated it.

"In my opinion using names as a reminder of someone is utterly stupid", Lizzie remarked, drumming along on the rim of her cup.

"Oh really?"

"It usually ends with the poor child being named Elisabetta Florentine Isolde Margarete plus some additional last names and titles. If parents are so adamant about getting their child bullied at school, they couldn't have done a better job at it."

"You survived."

"Barely", Lizzie spat, decapitating another set of innocent gummy bears, green ones this time. "I mean, what kind of scatterbrained idiots give their child the name "Elizabeth"? You can't even grant them a teeny tiny bit of creativity for it, like you can do with the poor soul called Apple Blossom or something like that-" She paused for a moment before shaking her head, deciding that her tirade about parents naming their children after groceries would take her too far away from the actual topic. "I'm pretty sure they named me after the queen and that's just pathetic."

"Are you sure, there's no Elizabeth among your ancestors? It's a pretty common name in English history."

"Oh, goodness, please not!", Lizzie pleaded. "Because then, not only would I have to grant my parents creativity and effort by finding a name for the accidental girl in their crib, but I would have to accept the fact that they named me after some spoiled brat, that spent her days trimming bonnets and dancing at fancy balls, not to mention she probably married her Prince Charming and lived with him and a bunch of little Charmings fucking happily ever after."

She saw how Anne rolled her eyes. "And you've got no prejudices at all, right?"

"What, me?" Lizzie grinned. "No, I'm just a complicated fuck up."

"Cynical?"

"Partly." She waved with her right hand and smiled mischievously. "If I'm in the mood."

Anne laughed, the first happy sound from her that day and her eyes lit up. "If you're in the mood?", she repeated. "Don't tell me that's the same mood you're in when-"

"No, because then I generally talk very little", Lizzie grinned. Anne placed her knitting aside and tugged at the red silk ribbon tied around Lizzie's hair.

"You didn't complain about your middle name yet", the ambergirl teased her with a tentative smile.

"Don't get me started", Lizzie warned her and adjusted her sun glasses. "Thank goodness, I managed to get hold of my records in third grade. No idea, what my parents were thinking giving me _that_ name."

"I like the idea", Anne said softly and Lizzie craned her neck to get a better look at her. "Names as a connection to the past, lines finely spun between the generations... Family..." She sighed.

"Who are you named after?", Lizzie asked and blinked against the sunlight.

"After my aunt."

"The dead or the crazy one?"

"The dead one." Anne sighed again. "Sometimes I think, my mother wouldn't be so filled with bitterness if my aunt was still alive."

"Your mother is downright insane."

"She's lonely."

"She wants you to marry your _cousin_."

"She suffers from hallucinations", Anne deadpanned, making Lizzie smile softly.

"So you decided to keep your aunt's name but not your mother's last name?", she asked. Anne nodded.

"But why the name "Elliot"?"

"Do you know "Jane Eyre"?" Lizzie nodded slowly. "That's the name the Rivers-Family gives her after Jane fled from Rochester. I thought it would fit."

"It does", Lizzie said quietly. "I like it. _Anne Elliot._ Sounds good... like a statement."

"A statement", Anne repeated the words quietly, her voice full of longing. "Yeah, that's a way to say it."

"Or hypocrite", Lizzie interjected and raised both eyebrows.

"You enjoy calling people liars way too much", Anne reprimanded her. "Someone could conclude you're talking about your own life, my dear."

"Hey, you're the one telling me not to run away from myself and at the same time you're changing your name to distance yourself from your lunatic of a mother! If that's not running, then I'm fucking delusional."

Anne shook her head. "I stopped running a long time ago, darling. The name is mine, mine alone. I named myself, the person I fought to become for so long. It's like a tattoo but not on my skin."

Lizzie was silent for a few heartbeats. "Still afraid of needles?"

"In comparison to you, everybody seems like a coward when it comes to ink and needles."

The girl with the sun glasses smiled impishly. "That's true."

Anne breathed in deeply and turned her face upwards to the sun, making her resemblance to a teeny tiny pixie buddha even more striking.

"On days like these I wish I could still run away", she mumbled. Lizzie's eyebrows twitched.

"Yeah", she said slowly with a pout on her lips. "If this is what happens when you stop flying then I have no desire to ever stop doing so."

"You mean, when your past comes back to haunt you?" Anne blinked. "Perhaps it just means that you're finally ready to face what scares you at night."

"I don't want to face it", Lizzie said stubbornly and thrust her chin forwards. "I'm perfectly happy with hiding under my blanket." Anne sighed.

"What?", Lizzie cried out. "It's a pretty blanket. With flowers and dots and a decapitated barbie on it."

Anne chuckled and rolled her eyes. "I don't want to face it, too", she said quietly. "But when Hetty and Lou start hanging out with her, there's nothing I can do about it."

Lizzie noticed how her fingers started twitching at her words.

"So that's what you want to try?", she asked while Anne stroke about the light golden shimmering strands. "Be polite and make peace?"

"I sincerely doubt it will be that easy", Anne replied with a barely audible, though decidedly bitter laugh. "I pretty much ripped out her heart and threw it on a bonfire all those years ago, you know?"

"She pretty much did the same when she left you", Lizzie argued, but Anne simply shook her head and didn't elaborate.

"You know, if you never told me about her, I never would have guessed that you-"

"Like girls?" She laughed and shook her head again. "I don't."

"But Went-"

"She's an exception.", Anne interrupted her as if she couldn't bear hearing her name. "_My_ exception. Both were silent before Anne continued.

"It wasn't...It was never..." She sighed. "She's the only girl I ever..." She stopped herself again. "God, that sounds so cliché, so trivial...As if it was just some crush, but...it wasn't..." She growled in frustration. "Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that she was everything, the only girl, the only... human being, I ever loved..." Her voice lost itself in the wind, chasing around the red and golden leaves like it was a fucking circus and they did the show to amuse the two girls on the wall. "It wasn't important, what she looked like, what kind of gender she had..All these outward attributes didn't make a fucking difference to me, couldn't, didn't... I would have loved her too, had she been a guy... Hell, I mean, I dated guys before and it would have so much easier for the both of us, but... It was _always_ her and nothing I did could ever changer that, no matter how hard I tried." She laughed quietly. "So don't worry about me ever falling for you."

"As if I ever feared that", Lizzie snorted. "It takes two in my opinion to start something. Having boobs doesn't mean I'm some kind of prey, you know."

"Your head is in my lap", Anne remarked with a raised eyebrow. "And you're emotionally damaged."

"And you're talking about your long lost love." Lizzie rolled her eyes and adjusted her sun glasses.

"Who _you_ tried to make jealous by the way."

"She'll benefit from it", Lizzie replied and poked her in the side. "Don't worry."

"You're sure about that?", Anne asked doubtfully. "I don't want to hurt her even more.

Lizzie looked at . "You still love her, don't you , Anne Elliot?"

Anne blinked and looked down at her, the gold of her eyes burning and it was like watching someone suffering in their own, personal hell with no way to get out.

"I never stopped."

* * *

**A/N: So how was that? Give me your opinions, on names and crazy relations and Anne's confession... By the way, Lady C will probably be based on real life, so please beware, I got some fucked up people in my family...  
**

**Did you get the cross-over? Next chapter, Lizzie will have a pretty little run-in with one black-haired girl... She's a loyal one, I give you that;) **

**Reviews appreciated!**


	12. Chapter 11 Coffee Days - Tuesday

**A/N: I'm sorry! This should have been uploaded a lot faster, but crashing internet and pressing time-schedules just wouldn't allow it. I'm also trying to keep on track with the german version, which is always a lot of work;) **

**Thanks a lot for all your reviews, favs and follows, it means so much to me! Also thanks a million for your support and don't worry, I don't think I could live without writing this story to its rightful end, I might just go crazy... To answer some questions from your reviews (I didn't have time to respond earlier, sry):**

**I'm glad you really like Anne, I was, to be honest, both times a bit nervous, when I introduced Craig's and Anne's homo-/bisexuality in chapters, not because I feared flames, but more because this is a classic and yeah... I tend to do the overthinking a lot;) About Anne: I'm not going to tell you more, because then the surprise would be gone, only so much: Don't get fooled by her name. That's all;) **

**Her views on love... I have to admit it was beautiful to write it, because it's so honest, it stems from a lot of talk I had with my mum and my friends about it, even though I don't completely agree with the "only" part of her speech, our little girl is a romantic at heart, what can I say? **

**To Wendywho: And I wouldn't make the mistake to underestimate Lizzie, just saying, that girl's a fighter;) I'll explain Forster's guys at a later date, but don't fear them, they're despite being chauvinistic, ignorant idiots, pretty harmless;) About the nickname, perhaps you'll get it after this chapter, it concerns Lizzie's middle name and what she's called in one of the flashbacks she had in the first part of Coffee Days. **

**To wittyanglophile: Great that you like Regina Spektor, you can practically take every song of her and relate it to this story;) And no, I'm not going to get intimidated by flames, they just infuriate me from time to time;) About the teacher/student stuff, it's not going to be like this (ya know, sex on the desk and all that stuff, sorry to disappoint some of you) I just wanted circumstances that would seperate them like the money/statues issue did in the Regency period. It's also a safety blanket for Lizzie and allows a lot of crashing and burning (and funny scenes;) But thanks a lot for your long and encouraging review, I have to give you guys awards or something;)**

**Anyway, back to the story;)**

**Disclaimer: Don't own, still a student, still not dead even though I feel like a Zombie from time to time.**

* * *

**Chapter 11: Coffee Days - Tuesday**

Tuesday

"_And it was not your fault but mine, and it was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time, didn't I, my dear?" _

_Little Lion Man, Mumford and Sons_

"You did _what _exactly?", Janes voice practically shrilled through the loudspeaker of Lizzie's phone on Tuesday afternoon, while Lizzie was waiting in the queue at _Costa _for her cappuccino, which seemed to take some extra time today, because the pimply guy with the hipster glasses and the brush cut was still in training.

Some people behind her in the queue looked at her disapprovingly, but Lizzie just grinned and rolled her eyes, sparing herself the obligatory shrug this time, because the oversized bag, resting on her hip, had strained her shoulder enough today.

After the curious incident with the Kant-essays (despite multiple, rather menacing threats uttered by the Professor, the culprit, to Lizzies unabashed glee, was unfortunately never found) Darcy ordered them to do a bunch of research on other works written during the Age of Reason, especially with regards to moral concepts and ethics until the viva voce on Thursday and Lizzie had only been able to control her boiling anger about the Professor by refusing to even glance at him and hiding behind some magazine during the rest of the lecture.

"He's staring at you", Charlotte suddenly remarked, a shit-eating grin plastered across her face and Lizzie, caught completely unaware, turned around in bewilderment, half expecting to see George Wickham sitting behind her.

"I don't see anyone", she declared a bit irritated and turned her focus back to the article about cerebral tumours. It was the latest issue of the British Medical Journal – the Vogues and Cosmopolitans flying around this world were all a bunch of pretty garbage to her, only useful to even out tables or start bonfires with.

"Not there, silly", Charlotte replied (sex had the long-term effect of a slightly puffed up ego and a condescending way to treat her surroundings on her, which explained why Lizzie usually sought refuge at Craig's apartment during the aftermath). "I'm talking about _him_."

"Who?", Lizzie asked, distracted by the detailed description of a tumour especially effecting the visual aspects of the long-term memory.

"_Him_", Charlotte repeated and tugged at Lizzie's sleeve until the girl looked up in annoyance.

"I still can't see anybody matching your description, Char. You sure, you don't need glasses?"

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "Open your eyes and see, who our incredibly hot, incredibly _tall_ Professor is looking at, _Corazon_."

With a defeated sigh Lizzie looked up and the green eyes met the black ones. Knowing. Piercing. _Disapproving_.

"At the clock", she simply said and pointed at the back wall of the lecture hall behind them, where an oversized clock with syringes as hands hung. "Just another fifteen minutes."

Charlotte shook her head incredulously. "Believe me, honey. He doesn't look at the _clock_ that way."

Lizzie rolled her eyes, avoiding to look at Darcy again. "Then who is he watching?", she asked, marking the line with her index finger. "Michelle? Her new blouse is _pretty_ see-through."

"It's practically not there", Charlotte giggled. "But something in his eyes tells me that he's not really interested in redheads."

"Yeah, most guys like blondes", Lizzie replied absent-mindedly and was ripped away from her reading by Charlotte's loud snorting.

"Blondes? Are you fucking kidding me?", she cried out. "That guy has the hots for you and you-"

"Charlotte!", Lizzie hissed, suddenly aware of how loud her flatmate had become in her exclamations, just at the same time as Darcy yelled "Miss Lucas!".

The heads of both girls shot up and towards the Professor with lightning speed, whose eyes, like two snow storms, were now directed at Lizzie and Charlotte.

"Could you be so kind and tell me, Miss Lucas, what seems to be so unbelievably important for you to disrupt _my_ lecture?", the Professor demanded to know and everybody in the lecture hall seemed to take in a sharp breath.

Charlotte, momentarily reduced to the stuttering mess of a fifteen-year old girl standing in front of her first crush, was just stammering incoherent garbage and the crease in the Darcy's brow seemed to be getting deeper with every spluttered "I don't know" (Charlotte was a real coward when it came to confrontations with authority figures) and his attention soon shifted towards Lizzie, who, ignoring Charlotte's verbal outpouring, tried to concentrate on different treatments for these particular kinds of cerebral tumours.

"Miss Bennet", Darcy bellowed (the guy really had some anger-issues), followed by a collective gasp. Lizzie slowly lifted her head and raised an eyebrow in disinterest.

"Yes, _Professor_?" She emphasized the address and a mischievous sparkle flared up in her eyes for a moment. The Professor swallowed.

"Please, do me the honour and concentrate on the contents of this lecture, Miss Bennet, instead of reading cheap trash magazines and gossiping with your classmates!"

Again the collective gasp was audible, but Lizzie's only reaction to Darcy's outburst was just another eyebrow, raised in synchrony with the lifting of the medical journal's cover. She thrust her chin forward defiantly and couldn't help but grin when she saw him grow pale at the sight of the British Medical Journal's initials on the front.

"It's still no content of the lecture, Miss Bennet", Darcy declared, his voice unrelenting.

"Oh, how to sum it up..." Lizzie tilted her head to the side and put the journal back down. "Kant is an interesting example for sure, especially with regards to Enlightenment and as a pioneer for other philosophers. You know "Have the courage to use your own intelligence" and all that stuff, if you allow me the quote, Professor. Realizing his categorical imperative is rather difficult due to the unpredictability of the human mind and society..." She furrowed her brow. "Did I forget something? Oh my bad, _Dilemma_ would be the cue here. Otherwise I think it's a pretty neat summary of the past forty-five minutes, don't you think?"

She smiled mischievously and there was some sporadic wolf-whistling and clapping from the other students. Darcy silenced them all with one, icy glare.

"No matter how accurate your summary may be, Miss Bennet. It doesn't change the fact, that I expect, nay demand your full attention to the topics at hand and not spend on articles of the BMJ or Miss Lucas for that matter."

"What can I say? I can multitask", Lizzie sighed and sat up. "And apart from the fact that I really can't do anything about it, if _someone_ is practically yakking my ear off from the side", she threw Charlotte a menacing glare, the Spanish girl didn't react to, "I neither disturbed nor interrupted your lecture and basically, everything you told us so far is nothing, I haven't heard or", she grinned, "said before, for your information. So if you want me to focus on the topics at hand, then we should probably discuss something actually relevant to us."  
Again there was some whistling and Lizzie saw with a bit of discomfort that Darcy actually seemed uncomfortable with the turn this discussion was taking – it minimized her feeling of victory considerably. But as always, the Professor managed to destroy feelings like that almost instantly.

"So, if you want to discuss something relevant...", he started and Lizzie thought, she saw something like a small grin playing on his lips. "Then we have to finish the philosophers of the Age of Reason as quickly as possible." He rattled through a list of books with the velocity of a gunshot before closing his folder and announcing that "Thursday would be question day. Who doesn't learn will fail this class." Through the collective groan, replacing the previous horror in the student's faces, his voice cut through again, sealing Lizzie's face like a good aimed shot to the back of the head. "You can choose a volunteer from among this group. Please be reasonable in your choice, because this person will be responsible for the pass of each of you."

And while Lizzie assured her rather enraged classmates that _of course_ she would take the part of volunteer or in other words: sacrificial lamb, while the culprit packed away his stuff placidly.

Charlotte, who seemed to have found her voice somewhere in the depths of her bag again, leaned in to Lizzie.

"And he's still staring at you", she whispered, which made Lizzie groan in annoyance.

Which brought her back to the present, because the weight of her bag filled with books from Darcy's pretty detailed list, threatened to break apart her shoulders and if she didn't get her coffee anytime soon, like a _really_ soon, she was in serious danger of murdering someone, preferably Darcy himself.

"I only told him that Kant in all his glory is not really relevant for fourth year med students with a shitload of work, who need to learn about ethics when it comes to dealing with patients", Lizzie grumbled.

Brush Cut cast her an apologizing glance while throwing away yet another cup of Zombie-resurrecting cappuccino because it didn't met _Costa_-standards.

"Lizzie, he's your Professor. He'll know best, what you should learn", Jane admonished her and Lizzie rolled her eyes.

"Jane, your trust in authority figures is heart-warming, really it is. But only because someone is a bit older and in a position of power, it doesn't make him some bloody, omniscient deity, okay?"

An old lady, three feet behind her, snorted and shook her head in disgust.

"Sorry, Ma'am", Lizzie told her over her shoulder, which made the guy behind her snicker.

"Where are you, Lizzie?", Jane asked, obviously she caught the last part.

"_Costa_, still waiting for my coffee", Lizzie replied exasperated. "It takes forever and a day here and- _I swear you'll carry this bag home for me if you screw up this cup, little Hipster!"_, she hissed with such a terrifying expression on her face that Brush Cut nearly dropped the plastic cup in shock.

"Na, na, na", Jane scolded her in her usual I'm-a-teacher-don't-fuck-with-me-voice. "Threatening never helps, if you want someone to succeed. Take Nico for example, he has no problem with using the toilet adequately if you leave him alone but if you pressure him too much..."

"Jane, now is not the time for your educational advices ", Lizzie replied and hid her smile behind the sleeve of her jacket.

"Just saying... is he looking like he's panicking? Perspiration on his forehead? Dilated pupils and trembling hands? Because if yes, that's a sign that-"

"-he has to go to the toilet?", Lizzie finished her sister's sentence, which caused another, even more panicked glance from Brush Cut.

"Either that or he's going to faint", Jane replied dryly. She had a sense of humour, that girl.

"That's really encouraging, Janie." She watched Brush Cut from the corner of her eyes and groaned. "I need _coffee_", she whined. "You can only get _so_ far with instant powder and ab overdose of sugar!"

"Do they teach you about healthy eating in your classes?", Jane asked, a mix of sarcasm and concern evident in her voice. "Because it doesn't sound that way."

"No, they only teach us useless stuff about Kant and other dead guys", Lizzie replied and shifted the bag's weight from one hip to the other, while grimacing in pain.

"What exactly is your problem with William again?", Jane asked and Lizzie was surprised by the annoyed undertone in her voice. Jane Bennet was never annoyed.

"Don't call him that, Jane!", Lizzie cried out. "We don't call the enemy by his first name!"

"He's not your enemy, sweetheart."

"That's your opinion, naïve little citizen. But one of these days, he's going to tear the mask from his face and you'll all see, what he really is. A -"

"- Human Being?", Jane asked dryly.

"An Alien!", Lizzie cried out, startling Brush Cut again. The guy was getting paranoid, not that she blamed him.

"Lizzie", Jane said in her most soothing, calm, use-only-for-crazy-people voice. "He's not an Alien. They're green."

"Not the point, Jane!"

"Then what's the point, dear sister? Because I really don't get what your problem is with him!", Jane said exasperated.

"He's just grating on my nerves, okay? He's an arrogant asshole with his I-know-about-every-litlle-fart-in-this-universe-attitude and-"

"You seemed to get along well on Saturday", Jane interjected. "Judging from the way you two acted all cozy on the dance-floor, people would never think that you can't stand the sight of him. Is this some weird attraction thing? Because -"

"Don't even go there!", Lizzie threatened her sister, her voice sharp like a razor. "Don't you dare insinuate that there could be something between the two of us!"

"You two have a pretty strong kind of attraction..."

"He's my bloody Professor!", Lizzie shouted, ripping the finally ready cup practically out of Brush Cut's trembling hands.

"I never thought that would deter you."

"It wouldn't", Lizzie interjected marching through the huge front doors out into the wild London-Chaos. "I don't want him to do anything but his lectures. In a useful sort of way of course. Nothing more!"

"Oh Lizzie", Jane sighed. "How many times do I have to tell you that denial-"

"- is not a solution? I know, Janie. You use the same saying when it's about drugs and violence."

Jane sighed again.

"It also doesn't matter anymore, okay? After kicking him out of Craig's apartment Saturday, he's probably not my biggest fan right now."

"What did you do, Lizzie?, Jane asked, her voice strained.

"Kicked him out of the apartment?", Lizzie repeated timidly.

"Lizzie Bennet!"

"So what? He behaved like an asshole, told me that Craig needed therapy and all that crap."

"Perhaps he' right."  
"Even if he is right, which I'm still sure he's not, it wasn't his place to – wait a moment..." Lizzie stopped dead in her tracks. "You knew it! You knew about Saturday!"

"I...I..."

"Don't lie to me, Janie. You're a horrible liar! You knew what happened Saturday, because you didn't even ask for specific details like you normally do to _"evaluate a situation from all possible ankles_". You didn't, because the damn fucker _ratted on me_!"

"It's not ratting on someone, if he's just voicing his concern about-"

"Voicing his concern?!", Lizzie spat out. "You would've done the same thing, had you been in my position!"

"But I wasn't and I don't want to judge, but-"

"He should "_voice his concerns_" about Caroline of all people if he's so fond of the pastime. I'm sure she'll be thrilled!"

"Lizzie..."

"No, Jane. Don't try the guilt-trip, he had no right to barge into this whole mess like he did!", Lizzie cried out angrily, while the pile of books danced painfully on her hip.  
"Lizzie!"

"If he gets off by playing good Samaritan, then he should worry about the artificial blonde, who's snorting coke behind her brother's back!"

"Lizzie, Caroline has a problem-"  
"And Craig doesn't?", Lizzie shouted exasperated, marching down the steps to the Underground Station.

"Of course, sweetheart, but-"  
"But what, Janie?", she bit out, angry tears burning in her eyes while she stared at the glittering advertisement for some Broadway-Musical. "Tell me, is Caroline in therapy? Is she talking to some motherfucking shrink?"

"No, but-"

"But where's the bloody difference?", she cried out loudly, raising a few strange looks from passers-by.

"There's no difference", Jane replied, anxious to calm her sister down. "Lizzie, Darcy already talked to Charlie about therapy programs for Caroline, but it's really difficult to find a facility, which is willing to take her for a longer period of time-"

"Can't imagine why", Lizzie muttered under her breath and shook her head.

"Lizzie!", Jane cried out, again way too high pitched for the human ear to process – it resulted in a droning headache and Lizzie grimaced in pain yet again.

"Okay, okay", she relented. "Does that mean he also interfered with that?"  
"Lizzie, it's enough, okay? First you want to rip off that man's head, because he didn't care about Caroline and now you want to, because he does? You're contradicting yourself, sweetheart!"

Lizzie sighed, coming to an end with possible comebacks, which was a rare occurrence for her.

"Fine", she finally gave in. "That guy is just a pain in the-"

"I know", Jane hurriedly finished her sister's sentence (she had an aversion to cursing, one of the reasons she was a primary school teacher).

"He's the reason I have to study ancient philosophers for two nights straight now!"  
"Don't provoke your teachers, darling."

"And my coffee is cold."  
"Then get some new from _Prêt-a-manger_, it's better either way."

"No Starbucks?"

"No Starbucks", Jane repeated with a clipped voice. "And you're going to apologize."

"Jane!", Lizzie protested, her mouth agape.

"No, no Buts, Sweetheart, you're going to apologize. I'm not in the mood to go through our next Sunday-Dinner with two intransigent squabblers at the table, who can't handle their obvious sexual attraction!"

"Jane, I'm not going to fucking sleep with him just so you can shoot another episode of "_My little Housewife_"!"

"I don't want you to sleep with him, but to apologize! Preferably without ripping each other's heads off in the process and if you don't do it, Elizabeth _Theodora_ Bennet, then I'm going to tell Mom, that you're turning off your mobile-phone on purpose, if she tries to reach you!"

"_Jane_", Lizzie complained feebly.

"What? Too much?", Jane asked, instantly worried.

"No", Lizzie waved it aside. "I'm proud of you and all that, but-"

"But what?"

"You said _the name_", Lizzie whispered insistently and looked around in paranoia.

"Stop being ashamed of your middle name, sweetheart. It's beautiful and no reason to work yourself into a full-grown panic-attack."  
"What if someone heard you?", Lizzie whispered into the phone, consiprationally looking around to check one last time.

"Lizzie, calm down, I'm home and there's no one here besides me", Jane answered patiently.

"Does Charlie have cameras in his apartment?"

"Lizzie!"

"What? I'm not asking about the private sex-tapes, you shoot with them. Bah, that would be downright gross-"

"Lizzie!"  
"Fine, fine. I don't need any details."

Jane groaned in annoyance. "So, I'm going to hang up, my paranoid little sister, and will try to prepare tomorrows lesson in Arts and Crafts. You're going to apologize to William, are we clear?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"That's a good girl. And believe me, I _will_ know", she threatened before hanging up.

Lizzie grimaced. "So who's paranoid _now_?", she mumbled to herself and shut her phone, while staring at the destination board, willing the little numbers to move faster.

"Lizzie!", a voice sounded from behind her and before Lizzie could process what was happening, she was surrounded by two bouncing girls, a redhead and a blonde, demanding her attention with loud outcries and shrieks.

"Lou! Hetty!", Lizzie managed to get out, after she'd gotten over the initial surprise , grinning at the girls' antics, while they told her in their sing-sang-voices about what they'd been up to past few weeks since the last dinner at Mus' house.

"...we went to that concert-"

"-the one at Hyde Park."

"-No, Regents Park, Hetty. Hyde Park was last week!"

"That's what I'm talking about! There was this band, Lizzie-"

"But Hetty, I was talking about the concert at Regents Park, the one Benwick took us to!"

"That's what you're rambling about? But that was in no way as great as the other one! We didn't get farther than the rose-garden and they only played the usual stuff!"

"That's what I wanted to tell Lizzie!", Lou, the redhead, cried out, she wore the same green dress, she sported on Monday, when Lizzie saw her together with Anne in the backyard of the Social Sciences Building.

"Then hurry up, sluggard", Hetty, the one with the short, blonde locks, grumbled and jumped from one feet to the other like a cheerleader on ecstasy.

"I'm already finished!", Lou replied and as if on cue, both girl turned their angelic, little faces towards Lizzie.

"Lizzie", Lou began and Hetty chimed in in canon. Both their smiles deepened, when Lizzie's eyes grew big and round like saucers.

"Oh no!", she cried out and took a step back, which was made rather difficult by the heavy bag resting on her hip. "No, no, no!" She raised both arms in defence, but Mus' daughters just grinned like Cheshire-cats. "Lizzie...", they repeated, tilting their heads to the side simultaneously.

"Oh no, my lovelies, I'm not taking you with me, if you want to go out partying. _Philip's_, okay. Marley, Charlotte and I are always there to babysit you, but I know how that will end, if I take you somewhere-"

"But Lizzie!", they protested almost at the same time. They were twins, Mus' daughters from his first marriage to Mary, the hypochondriac and even though they didn't look the twin part on the outside, they met every cliché on the inside. "It's not our fault that we're only seventeen!"

"You could just play around with your matchbox cars and dolls like all the other children your age."

Hetty pouted, while Lou stuck out her tongue. "But Lizzie..."

"Your father would kill me, literally _kill me_, if he ever found out about me getting you into clubs illegally!"

"That's bullshit", Lou waved it aside. "He'll probably just poke a hole into your water bottle, next time you're over there in the desert, but aside from that, he's pretty harmless." Hetty nodded earnestly at her sister's words.

"Is that so? Then I'll just throw you on the rail track", Lizzie replied dryly, which made both girls laugh.

She liked the Groveland-Twins, they reminded her of her own sisters with the slight difference that in contrast to Lydia and Kitty, they still seemed to have some working brain cells in their pretty, little heads. Okay, to be fair, both of them scored pretty high in the intelligence department, because they were both in their second semester, studying political science at age seventeen.

After her trip to Kenya five years ago and her additional move to London afterwards, Mus' family became something like her substitute-family. The one she spent holidays and vacations with if Craig and Charlotte went back home and Jane didn't force her to come back to Meryton.

She loved Mus, the little man with the moustache and the slightly strange collection of old philosophy and medicine books in his own, small library out there in the suburbs; she loved him, the man, who was crazy about water pipelines and hygiene standards, loved him like you love a crazy uncle, a childlike father with a wealth of knowledge and wisdom in his sparkling eyes and a playful but earnest attitude. His wife Sophie was something like a mother-figure in her life, which made the twins some kind of chimaera between cousins and sisters to her.

"Are they from Daddy's collection?", Hetty promptly asked, peeking into the bag on Lizzie's hip. Hetty was a tad more cautious than Lou, she took the watching, the observing part, while Lou fought their battles.

Lizzie nodded. "Your Dad already added his notes to the pages, which makes my work a whole lot easier."

"Don't you study medicine?", Lou asked, raising an eyebrow in question.

"I thought so, too", Lizzie groaned. "And then this morning, a dragon appeared right in front of me."

"Oh, a fairytale!", Lou gushed and Hetty giggled. "Tell us the whole story when you come over for dinner on the weekend, okay? Sophie suggested hosting a barbecue, so be prepared for the call."

"I will be", Lizzie promised and smiled affectionately. "By the way, where are you two headed?"

"Oh, we're just waiting for a friend", Lou explained, while Hetty continued bouncing up and down like a freaking rubber ball. "She should – Oh, see, there she is!", she cried out, when a train on the other side of the platform pulled in and the girl from Monday descended.

Her hair was still sleek and black and she still looked like she just jumped out of an advertisement for hair shampoo. Only her countenance didn't match that impression, because the small smile on her lips disappeared the moment she caught sight of Lizzie and the green-eyed girl had to physically restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

"Wentworth!", Lou and Hetty cried out at the same time, flinging their arms around the raven-haired girl's neck, who returned their affections with a smile and tentative pat on their backs.

"Wentworth, that's Lizzie", the Groveland-Twins introduced her, while they dragged the poor girl over to Lizzie, who cast desperate glances at the destination board. But to no avail, a minute was still not over.

"We've met", Wentworth said in a clipped tone and brushed a few wayward strands of shiny, black hair out of her perfectly symmetrical face.

"Oh really?", not only Lou and Hetty asked at the same time, but Lizzie, too, arched an eyebrow and her mouth contorted in barely hidden amusement. "Didn't know that", she said and tilted her head to the side.

"However", Lou interjected, while Hetty pointed from one girl to the other.

"Wentworth, that's Lizzie, our unofficial adoptive-sister, ex-babysitter-"

"-not really so passé, when you two are knee-deep in shit", Lizzie interjected, but Lou waved it aside.

"- current babysitter for my dad when they are traipsing around in Africa and future doctor slash world saver. Lizzie, that's Wentworth, she's the new member of our study group. She's new in London and we promised to take her sight-seeing, you know, the whole shebang: The Tower, London-Eye, Buckingham-Palace, Carnaby-Street..."

"Camden Town, too?", Lizzie asked curiously.

"Of course!" They both nodded emphatically. "But not today, it's too sunny and there'll be no vacancy to turn around or even breathe."

"Don't tell me", Lizzie groaned. "I live there."

"And no one knows why", Hetty mumbled and grinned when Lizzie started protesting.

"You're friends with Anne...right?" Lizzie's eyes scurried over to Wentworth, who was watching her intently, surprised to be addressed by the girl, who so clearly seemed to despise her.

"We're all friends with Anne!", Lou beamed.

"Yeah, with the emphasis on _friendship_", Lizzie added, staring directly into Wentworth's eyes, who widened for a moment and Lizzie saw that she got the hint.

"Oh, will you tell her that she, too, should come over to the barbecue? She wasn't so sure yesterday, but Sophie will be heartbroken if she misses the event, so do you think you can kidnap her and drag her out into the lovely suburbs? Wentworth is also going to be there!"

"I'll try", she promised a bit warily even though she could imagine a lot more pleasant pastimes than spending an evening caught in the awkward stress field that existed between Anne and her ex-girlfriend. At least Mus would be there and he would probably get the situation between those two in the first thirty seconds of the evening, if he didn't know about it already. The look in his eyes when she spoke of Anne not two hours ago spoke volumes.

The girls said their good-byes, but Lizzie held Wentworth back when finally, finally her train pulled into the station.

"What do you want?", the raven-haired girl asked defensively, glaring at her out of dark-blue, almost black eyes.

"Anne Elliot", Lizzie said, adjusting the bag over her shoulder. "I don't care about what happened between the two of you-"

"I think that's -"

"None of my business? Damn right you are, but then you nearly killed me with your death-glares only because you thought, there was something between Anne and me. Utter bullshit by the way, even tough I provoked it."

"I-", Wentworth tried to interject, her brow furrowed, but Lizzie cut her off with a motion of her hand.

"I don't fucking care, okay?", she declared, holding open the door of the underground train with the other hand. "But one thing: Leave Anne the hell alone and I leave you alone. If you even as much as lay a finger on her, then we two will have a nice, little chat, that won't end as pleasantly as this one, got it?"

Wentworth just looked at her and Lizzie raised her chin, a final reminder not to fuck with her before she disappeared between the closing doors of the train.

She let out a sigh when the underground-station and the three girls disappeared from her sight and when people's faces turned into blurry, colourful mess under the flickering light, an idea began to form in her head and when she stepped out of the Station "Camden Town" twenty minutes later, a smile on her face told everyone that a plan had been made.

She only needed a bit help.

"Marley", she called, when she walked into _Philip's_. In contrast to the blinding sunlight pouring in from outside, the Pub resembled a scared little child, hiding underneath the blanket.

The Pub owner's head appeared behind the bar. "What can I do for you, Lizzie-Bee?", she asked, caressing the silver braid hanging over her shoulder.

Lizzie grinned and came closer

"I need your help", she said and leaned in to Marley, who listened with bright, sparkling eyes.

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**A/N: So do you believe me now that Lizzie has something up her sleeve? ;) Be prepared;) **

**So what do you think? Next chapters are really short, so they should be up in the next few days;)  
**


	13. Chapter 12 Coffee Days - Thursday

**A/N: Okay, I promised a faster update this time and so here it is! (Basically I just couldn't focus on studying today, so blame it on the geniuses who invented factor analyses...) This is a really short one and the next will be even shorter (like I said, they're part of this one big chapter) and then we're finished with Coffee Days and we'll get on to a bit of Drama;) **

**Someone in the first part asked me to highlight Lizzie's flashbacks better... I'm sorry, but I won't. They're written in cursive, which highlights them enough in my opinion, just like Lizzie's other, direct thoughts, because they're nothing BUT that: thoughts... So to sum it up everything in cursive, which is NOT direct speech, is what you are looking for to complete the Puzzle (not that we're anywhere near finished) BUT I really, really like to hear your thought about it! **

**Disclaimer: Don't own just use (god, that sounds DIRTY...) **

**So let's get it started...**

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**Chapter 12 Coffee Days - Thursday  
**

Thursday

"_Step One: Light me on fire. Step Two: Walk clean away. I won't burn long and evidence of your done wrong will be gone, in seconds, I swear."_

_In Fact, Gregory and the Hawk_

She saw him from a distance. Tall, dark, he wore a three-piece-suit but without a tie and involuntarily her mouth contorted into an amused smile.

Lizzie pressed her knees against her chest, placing her feet on the radiator grille of the black Range Rover and she blinked into the faint sunlight, not much more than a dull shadow, a pale something flickering and hiding behind the clouds. The air was crisp, the wind had gotten stronger the past few days and it faintly smelled like Winter, while the dancing leaves, scampering over the empty parking lot, scratched and scraped on the rough asphalt's surface, before they became airborne again.

_Why do I always think about you, when the weather's changing? _ The words were in her head before she could process what was happening, unwanted, uninvited, _traitorous_, little words with the power to destroy, never to get back up again.

They crossed a line, the line she'd drawn with Craig's apartment, with the book under the mattress and now they invaded her head and mind, when she was not prepared to hear them.

_I associate thoughts about you with changes in weather and I only let them get back into my mind if the conditions are the same. I'm like a computer, a giant, reluctant machine with too many walls in its system._

_But I remember a lot of things if I don't want to remember you._

She saw him coming closer and she ignored the shiver running down her spine – automatically she pulled the blue sweatshirt tighter around her body.

_The incessant crackling of rain against the window pane, hands stroking over denim..._

She heard his footsteps on the asphalt and how they came closer. She shut her eyes tightly.

_The ringtone of my phone when I got a text from you at three in the morning... My mother, who was practically bursting with joy – she nearly did a somersault in the kitchen. _

"Miss Bennet." At the sound of his voice she felt the goosebumps on her skin and wondered if it was some kind of warning.

"Darcy." She opened her eyes and for a moment it was so damn hard to breathe.

_The smell of sunscreen, while my skin is burning._

She shook her head slightly and the crease in the Professor's brow deepened even further.

"What are you doing on my car?"

"Waiting." She blinked.

A heartbeat. "For what?"

She smiled, blinking into the faint sunlight, and leaned back with her hands propped up on the engine bonnet.

"For the sun to come back, for it being summer again... the solution for the Middle East conflict and of course world peace." She shrugged and held up one of the coffee cups in her hands. "And for you, but that was the least likely outcome."

He stared at the cup in her hands.

"You brought me coffee?"

"No, Professor." She picked herself up. "I brought _us_ coffee." She raised her index finger like an admonition. "There's a difference, because I'm not _that_ selfless."

"Obviously." He was still looking at the cup sceptically and she rolled her eyes.

"Don't get your panties in a rwist, Darcy", she assured him and showed him the label. "It's not Starbucks, so don't worry." Darcy swallowed before finally accepting the cup.

Lizzie took a sip of her own and watched a flock of black birds flying over the grey-blue sky.

"I have to apologize", she then said and her gaze flickered over to the Professor, who was watching her with dark, brooding eyes. "Not only for what happened Saturday, but also for my behaviour on Tuesday in class. I shouldn't have been so confrontational. It was uncalled for."

"It's fine. You showed everybody today that you're fluent in this topic", the Professor replied a bit exhausted and sat down next to Lizzie on the engine bonnet.

She froze.

"You're not happy about that?", she asked incredulously.

He looked up. "But of course! That was really good today." She caught his eyes on her. "Who taught you all about Kant and the Age of Reason? Your father?"

"Goodness, no!", she laughed. "It was a friend of mine."

He stared at her. "The one from Saturday?"

She shook her head and the expression on her face hardened. "No, Craig's more interested in artificial than in human intelligence."

"Is he-"

"Don't start it Professor", she warned him and her green eyes flared up dangerously. "Just drink you coffee."

He opened his mouth as if to protest, preposterous as that may be, but another glare from Lizzie shut him up for good this time.

"It's difficult, isn't it?", she asked after a while, during which they both stared up into the sky as if the solutions for every god-damn problem on this planet was to be found there. "Changing from practising to teaching, I mean."

A heartbeat. "It's different."

She risked a quick glance to her left. There were shadows under his eyes, which were even more prominent in the harsh, pale light of the October sun.

He was still good-looking, still beautiful in this quiet, unassuming way, that made your chest tighten, softly breaking apart pieces of your heart with each and every glance.

_Your beauty was different, _the voice in her head chimed in. _It was loud and bright and brilliant and just as possessive as the blue of your eyes._

… _and just as heartbreaking._

Her breath caught and her heart skipped a beat.

"Are you okay?", she heard the Professor asking beside her. She blinked.

"I'm fine", she said quickly and took another sip of her coffee, trying to chase way those unsought pictures, attacking her blindsided. What was up with her that she couldn't lock them away like she usually did?

"You've grown pale."

"It's fucking cold", she said tersely, without looking at him.

"Miss Bennet."

She furrowed her brow. "It's nothing", she finally said. "Memories can just be dangerous little fuckers sometimes."  
"That's true", he said and fell silent, while she still felt his eyes on her, hot and unrelenting. She trembled.

"It's different here", the Professor said after a while. "The city, the air, the climate... even the colours are different."

"Which ones do you miss?", she asked, curious against her will.

"Green", he said and there was so much longing evident in this one, single word that Lizzie nearly leapt up, shouting that _Darcy_ seemed to possess feelings after all. What a wonderful surprise!

But she didn't, because she tried to be civil for once.

"There's Green here", she replied, thinking about all those little parks and places in London, she so dearly loved.

"It's different", he said yet again and she wondered if he knew, he repeated himself. "The Green here is pretty, nice even, but it has nothing in common with the wild Green you find in Derbyshire."

"So you love your home."

He looked at her, dark eyes, watching, examining, criticising. "Yes", he simply said.

"Then why are you here?"

His hands curled into fists. "I don't think that's any of your business, Miss Bennet", he snarled, but Lizzie, who wasn't easily impressed by a bad mood and an obvious lack of manners and social skills, just took another sip of her coffee.

"Where I come from, everything's green, too", she said, staring into the pale, grey sky. "But there's nothing wild about it. It's dull, _boring_. Everything is covered in it as if people just let it overgrow everything out of pure disinterest."

"Which explains why you are here."

She turned towards him. "Oh really?"

"If you don't like your home..."

"I never said that."

"You didn't deny it."

"You're wrong", she simply said and took another sip.

"Then you're here because of the scholarship?" He sounded hopeful and she laughed loudly.

"Oh, someone did his homework!", she cried out and shook her head with laughter. "But believe me, when I tell you, I was here long before I even heard about the scholarship."

Darcy looked at her, the bewilderment evident in his eyes. "So then why are you here?"

"I won't tell you, because you didn't tell me either, Darcy. That's called fairness."

"So I have to find out myself?" His face was expressionless.

Lizzie laughed and stood up. "If you want..." She curtseyed. "But beware, I put out a lot of red herrings."

"You play your cards close to your chest."

She looked him in the eye.

"I don't like people traipsing around in my personal affairs", she said with a hard voice and grabbed her bag.

The Professor stood up. "Do you want a ride home?"

Again Lizzie was laughing. "Better leave it, Darcy. One time a disaster, always a disaster." She flicked her fingers. "I think in my own best interest, I'm going to take the tube."

She saw him getting ready to protest, but she cut him off. "See you on Tuesday, Professor!", she declared, waved and was gone within the blink of an eye.

_I remember a lot of things. _

Her steps echoed in her ears, and she hoped, nay prayed that he wouldn't follow her. The throng of people pushed her towards the underground station. The hissing and rattling, the ventilation and the well-known smell of-

_-nail polish remover in my room, because in my hurry to scrape the black paint from my fingernails before you come back to me, I accidentally knock over the bottle and the liquid pours all over my carpet._

The doors closed with a hiss and the colours of the wall and the people blurred together, vanished in the black tunnel when the train pulls out of the station.

_The ticking of the scales, when the hand doesn't stop at the right number yet again._

She barely saw, where she was going, eyes focused on the emptiness in front of her, staring, staring, just staring and she barely registered that she was close to home.

_The glass in my hand, the sparkling liquid and the overwhelming urge to just throw it against the next-best wall just to see if someone, anyone will notice._

The stained glass window in the wall next to her suddenly opened and Marley pushed her head out into the sunlight, blinking friendly like an old owl into Lizzie's shocked face.

"Na, na, Lizzie-Bee", the Pub-owner said. "It's time."

* * *

**A/N: Not what you were expecting RIGHT? Don't worry there will be some more of these cute, little dialogues (I'm a sucker for them;)... **

**ANYWAY! I'm a bit on a sugar high right now, so guys, TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! or the next update will take REALLY long;) And you all want to know what Lizzie's up to right? *grins evilly* (or not, but that would crush my self-esteem and we don't want that, do we?) **


	14. Chapter 13 Coffee Days - Friday

**A/N: Okay, first, thank you very much for all your lovely reviews! After getting back from my... high...from last time, I kinda felt bad for blackmailing you into reviewing, but then again it was really lovely to hear from you all, so keep it coming!**

**Second: WE KIND OF KICKED YOUR ASS, USA, didn't we? Sorry, watched soccer today and even though I KNOW a lot of you are american, I really, really, want to do a little victory dance right now... Okay, NSA, you don't have to see it... Anyone watched the game, too? We had strawberries with chocolate and A LOT of other sugary stuff... I love my life... **

**A lot of you asked about Lizzie's... thoughts... As you can probably guess, that's something revealed later on, but I wanted to get some infos out to you: What she says and remembers are actual memories, she says so in the beginning ("...anything but lies"), so while Lizzie is of course biased, these are actual things, that happened to her. **

**The thing about traumatic experiences is that if you try to repress them (blocking them out, trying to forget, "running away") memories are "stored" in the wrong part of the brain, the amygdala. Normally if you remember something, it's a biased version of the events, pale and weak in comparison to the real experience, but if they are stored in the amygdala-part of the brain, these memories are not filtered, "processed" so to speak. So if something (a smell, a picture, a sound) triggers them, they come rushing back to you with full force and overwhelm you, because it's like being back in the scene. Lizzie is, as Anne puts it, "running away", she's not dealing with her past except sometimes for those moments in Craig's apartment with the book, but they're not enough. She thinks the weather is a trigger to her, but we all know it's more...**

**Anyway, we'll get to a big trigger next time, until then this really short chapter is for you;) and thank you for sticking with me through "Coffee Days";)**

**Disclaimer: I bought make-up stuff today... would I do that as Jane Austen? Or watch soccer? Do a victory dance in my undies? Crap, I'd ****totally ****do the dance thing in one of those nightshirts...**

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**Chapter 13: Coffee Days - Friday  
**

Friday

"_...and nothing is sweeter than needed revenge, oh that's right! I did nothing and you were the mean one, in fact, you even broke my good tape deck."_

_In Fact, Gregory and the Hawk_

In the neighbourhood, where Lizzie, Charlotte and Craig lived in their cramped apartments and strange flat-sharing-community, Forster's garage was so old and deep-seated in the area, it had become a kind of institution over the years. Generation over generation of Forster-men owned the shop and generation over generation of apprentices were trained there – they all called their boss "The Colonel".

Even though the garage mostly employed local kids, England's oldest training company attracted teenagers all over London and drew them to Camden to be trained as a mechanic.

In all these years, Forster's garage had never been a problem for the community. Camden had always been a rather multicultural place and the reigning Colonel had been honoured by the major nearly every year for his commitment to help juvenile delinquents find a way out of criminality.

But in recent years Forster's guys more and more became Forster's gang, a group of yobs known for their red sweatshirts, their rather lax interpretation of the Narcotics Law and their frequent quarrels with the police, which could turn into burning garbage cans on the street at night.

By now most people tried to avoid the redcoats and even Marley ordered them to stay away from her Pub more than once, when they tried selling their stuff under her nose – it was one of Marley's unwritten laws that those, who smoke more than weed under her roof, get kicked out instantly never to come back again.

But Forster, after all these years as a public person in the neighbourhood, always exerted his influence when it came to protect his boys from the police, the law, angry neighbours or even from Marley and this constant rear cover had made the group insufferable and impudent – one of the reasons why Lizzie didn't want Craig to be anywhere near them.

The other was their blatant homophobia.

Rules are important, boundaries essential, that was Lizzie's mantra. You can't change people, but you can set boundaries, they're not allowed to cross without curtailing your own freedom and this line was violated in Lizzie's eyes the moment someone hurt _her_ people.

And she knew enough about Forster's guys to be sure that Craig hadn't taken the pills without provocation last Saturday.

She never injured anyone when she revenged her people, it wasn't her style and it would've gotten her into more trouble than necessary to reach her goal. To quote Jane: Violence is never a solution. But there were other possibilities.

Her being only five feet something tall had helped her immensely to reach this conclusion and it had saved her some trips to the ER.

But a well meant object lesson, clear in its meaning and origin while at the same time without any possibility to be traced back to her, could be.

A lesson, the redcoats wouldn't soon forget.

Lizzie smiled.

Her biggest trump was that the reigning Colonel had a soft spot for Marley, who made no secret of the obvious dislike she felt towards Forster's guys. So when the owner of _Philip's_ assured her yesterday that everything went according to plan, Lizzie had been able to see how all these small wheels interlocked, a neat system, setting the parts into motion, which, like dominoes, couldn't be stopped now.

She didn't only borrowed some books from Mus on Tuesday, but also blackmailed his two little sons Liam and Henry (another set of Groveland-Twins), who at the ripe age of seven were already the clowns and teacher-nightmares of their class, into giving her some of their special food colouring.

_Blue_ food colouring to be precise and she still shuddered when she thought about the price she'd have to pay for it. Blackmail only goes so far, you know...But back to the topic:

One of the reasons, Forster's garage was so good at helping delinquents with finding a way out of unemployment or criminality, was that the old fire station, which was next to the original garage from 19-something-or-other and bought by the last Forster as an extension to the original building, featured several bedrooms, showers and a common kitchen, therefore making 24/7-supervision and a regulated daily routine possible and affordable for the trainees.

A point that facilitated Lizzie's plan immensely.

Another one consisted of the fact that through a small roof-light, which was easily attainable by a small balancing act over the roofs of the garage and the fire station, one could very well slip into one of the shower rooms (if one wanted to of course).

This piece of information was only valuable if a) said roof-light was already opened and b) nobody was in those rooms at the time. There were some hopeless cases of lovesick teenagers, who loved the roof-light especially if the showers were _not_ empty, but fortunately some near-death-scenarios and amusing public-viewings of forty-five fire-fighters trying to get a screeching thirteen-year-old down the ladder later, Camden's female population had given up on trying to balance on the edge of a forty metres high building with cracking bricks and slippery tiles.

Everyone but Lizzie to be exact, but she did it for entirely different reasons.

So to ensure conditions a) and b) one needed a safe spy, one, who was on friendly terms with the enemy and could get him to open the gates without being overly suspicious (Marley and the Colonel had an on-/off-relationship going, which Lizzie used to the best of her beliefs) before stage 2 could begin.

This one was a thing of celerity, precision and timing. One needed to know what to do and how to do it without leaving traces, that could possibly lead the clueless victims to become suspicious.

And additionally knowledge, about how a shower head was built, was needed, but that was nothing a short youtube-video couldn't take care of.

Stage 3 – or better known as: _Run as fast as you can_, wasn't as complex as it was difficult to accomplish, because one had to get the whole way back through the roof-light, a task, Lizzie herself later on had no idea how the hell she managed it. (The words "Spiderman" and "Yoga" were used quite often).

After that there was nothing left to do but waiting.

So therefore on this particular, rather sunny Friday afternoon at quarter to five, Lizzie Bennet sat on a flowered folding chair on the roof top of her apartment building opposite to the fire station, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand, waiting for the shop to close and the trainees to make their way over to the showers, while she watched the crowd gathering in front of Marley's Pub – an impromptu Party on a Friday was sure to get enough audience together for the show.

There was another point supporting her plan. Forster's boys were incredibly vain and there was no better colour than blue to set off the red of their sweatshirts so beautifully and to mock the fire-fighter-motto after which they designed their redcoats.

Because that was, what made the Groveland-boy's (eager subscribers of every god-damn prank magazine in the whole bloody kingdom) food colouring so particular:

It took forever and a day to wash it off once it made contact with skin and she couldn't wait to see the blue faces of Forster's gang appear horror-stricken in the entrance of the fire-station – the camera was already in place and the crowd there downstairs was sure to spread the news, turning those wannabe-gangsters into good-little church-boys for the next few weeks.

And they _would_ get the message, because blue was _her_ fucking colour. They would sure as hell get it.

She craned her neck, blinking into the warm sunlight, a passing good-bye of the waning summer before autumn took its hand to lead it away.

_In completely wrong-headed moments I'm wondering if you're actually proud of me, of how I turned out, but then I remember, because that thought is so insane, so utterly ridiculous that I can't stop the laughter from shaking my body. _

_But perhaps, perhaps it's not laughter, perhaps a part of me is crying, crying like a baby over the things it lost... but psht... don't tell anyone. Keep it a secret, will ya'?" _

She raised her head, now wasn't the time to think about that, the clock stroke five, the audience was assembled... Let the show begin!

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**A/N: So an entire chapter without dialogue.. no really this one is more like a baby-chapter, a chapter-ly, something to cuddle and force to eat mashed carots... **

**So do you think Lizzie did a good-job? I got the idea from Hart of Dixie because Lemon is a fucking cool girl;) **

**See ya' next time, my lovelies! (and don't take it to hard, USA, you still passed even though WE WON! MÜLLER IS A FUCKING _GENIUS_!)**

**okay, really... don't hate me for being a bad winner;)**


	15. Chapter 14 Silence

**A/N: So we're doing things a bit differently this time, we have another point of view... Charlotte's! **

**I needed to write this, back in April mostly because it made sense because of the content and also because I began to seriously hate Charlotte.. which wouldn't be good for the story... **

**Anyway, for those of you hating me for joking about soccer the last time... looks like we're losing right now... so yeah **

**Soundtrack:**

** Eet - Regina Spektor **

**All This Time - Maria Mena **

**Disclaimer: If my last name started with an A, I wouldn't have had to wait for my grades so long in school...**

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**Chapter 14: Silence  
**

Lizzie Bennet stared at the small piece of paper at the wall with such intensity and such a thoroughly unreadable expression on her face that Charlotte, when she found her flatmate in the kitchen in front of the calendar, burst out laughing.

Lizzie didn't look up.

"Are you trying to stare the poor thing in the wall?", Charlotte teased, looking from Lizzie to the tear-off calendar with the big, black 15 on the front, but Lizzie didn't even bat an eyelash.

The smile on the Spanish girl's face vanished and her eyes grew big as saucers, while the panic started to build up in her stomach.

"It's today, right?", she asked, her voice no more than a whisper, but even now Lizzie didn't show any reaction beside the tensing of muscles along her neck and jawline.

Charlotte wanted to say something, anything, while wringing her hands nervously, but Lizzie turned around abruptly and rushed out of the kitchen back into her room, letting the calender sheets fly high, like leaves in the wind and when the storm finally settled down, one single piece of paper landed directly in front of Charlotte.

_Tuesday, October, 15th _

Charlotte stared at the sheet for a few moments and then at Lizzie's tightly shut door with all the collected postcards and photos from Kenya, she'd pinned there.

She bit her lip before marching over to Craig's apartment, banging loud against the wooden door.

It took a while and a lot yelling, but finally he ripped it open with a barked "Whattaya want?" and some indecipherable curses.

Charlotte didn't even bat an eyelash, she simply held the small piece of paper under the blonde guy's nose.

The reaction was immediate just like the change in demeanour, from pissed off to worried in the quarter of a second and his eyes grew as big as Charlotte's.

"Today?", he croaked, scratching his head. "Is she talking?"

Charlotte shook her head. "What do you think?"

"She's in her room?"

The girl with the wild hair nodded. "She won't get out of bed."

"Okay, you try to get her to move, pack her stuff and get her to eat something." He ran a hand through his tousled blonde hair. "I'll drive you to Uni and take you home afterwards, okay? We'll figure something out for this evening."

Charlotte nodded, adrenaline flooding through her veins and now that they had a plan, the lump in her throat finally disappeared.

She knew Lizzie for four years now, since the first lecture they'd both attended to be precise and both had been searching for a flatmate at the time. Lizzie had been living together with Anne for the first months, but that had never been a permanent solution and Charlotte had just been relieved to have finally found someone remotely normal (as normal Lizzie could ever be of course) and to be able to get out of her cousin's cramped little house in the suburbs.

Charlotte knew that the relationship, Anne and Lizzie had with each other, was something she'd never share with Lizzie and that there were things her flatmate would never tell her, things about herself and why she was the way she was and even though she felt like an intruder from time to time, she never resented them for it.

Craig saw the expression in Charlotte's eyes and hugged her briefly. "We can do that", he whispered. "We managed it just fine last year and we'll do so again, okay? Just call Anne, even though I think, she already knows."

Charlotte nodded again. If Lizzie and Anne had a special relationship, she and Craig had one, too.

They were both quite similar in the way they viewed the world and they understood each other in a way, Lizzie's rather idealistic world view didn't allow. Which didn't mean that they didn't love Lizzie, they did so fervently, but she was the Mum of their group, the one, who took care of everyone, made them all eat their vegetables and scolded them if they did something stupid. That was something neither Charlotte nor Craig did and sometimes it was just good to know that the other person didn't judge for what they were deep down. For all those little egoisms and selfishness, for the escapades and their desire to be loved by another person. Things, she seldom could admit to Lizzie face to face.

Charlotte disentangled herself from Craig's embrace, ordering him to get dressed, because he was still wearing shorts (yellow with little batman logos) and an old Rolling-Stones-T-Shirt.

Back into her apartment she knocked on Lizzie's door, but nobody reacted. She knocked again and entered without waiting for a reply (they had banned keys from their apartment a long time ago after some incidents, Charlotte had no pleasure in remembering).

Lizzie's room was smaller than Charlotte's, more compact, but she'd never heard Lizzie complaining about it. The walls were painted white and were nearly completely covered with photos, postcards, prints and posters, creating one big collage, that took over her whole room.

There wasn't much furniture in there. A wardrobe in the corner, a desk, which was buried under various papers and books, where a single potted plant fought its way through the chaos and in the middle of the room stood Lizzie's queen-sized bed with the iron wrought bedposts and the canopy with the white mosquito net.

Lizzie's body was curled up in the middle of the huge mattress in between the white sheets, fully dressed in black jeans and an oversized band-T-shirt. She had her headphones in her ears and was staring at the ceiling, her face an impassive mask, not even moving, when Charlotte got closer.

She'd gotten used to the October, 15th-days, the days, when Lizzie stopped speaking, even though it had scared the shit out of her the first time – it was the only day in the year, when Lizzie needed other people to make it through the day. It was strange, going from child to parent and back again, but they'd developed a strategy over the years, plans, a safety net and a program, only today, today it had caught them unaware.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, tipping with her index finger on the screen of Lizzie's iPod, _LaDispute's_ album _Wildlife_ appeared and Charlotte sighed.

"Lizzie?" She shook her friend's shoulder, but the girl didn't move. "Come on, Lizzie. Get up!"

She tugged on the headphones, which dropped out of her ears with a quiet _plop_. The hammering of basses and the screaming of a man's voice sounded through the speakers, but Lizzie still didn't react.

There were moments, where Charlotte envied Lizzie. For her green eyes, for her personality, which seemed to shine right through every inch of her and manifest in the delicate, feline features of her face and as if to even top that, she reminded from time to time of a broken porcelain vase, someone had pieced together provisionally – there was nothing, people found as fascinating as broken human beings.

"Come on!", she cried out, shaking her, but Lizzie's head just swung back and forth like a lifeless doll.

"Lizzie, you already know the procedure, if you don't get up right now Craig will carry you downstairs, so just make it easier for everyone and get the fuck up!"

Lizzie didn't say anything, but Charlotte saw a slight crease in her brow.

"No, I'm not going to let you stay in bed all day", she replied, hands on her hips. "You may have lost the ability to speak, but that's no excuse for you to hide under your blanket until midnight."

She tilted her head to the side and tapped her food in exasperation. "Lizzie!"

The crease in Lizzie's brow deepened and Charlotte knew that despite everything, her silence included, she still could hear her.

"Lizzie, it's enough, get out of the fucking bed!"

Lizzie's gaze fell on Charlotte, but the girl swallowed the sympathy, she felt rising in her, when she made eye-contact with the green iris'. They were dark without a hint of the usual spark in it.

"No, don't even try it", Charlotte replied rather indignantly. "You're going to get up and go to Uni and – No, I'm not going to tell Anne that you're fine!" She furrowed her brow. "Who do you think I am? Winner in the category of superhuman liars? Have you ever tried to lie to Anne? That's pretty much impossible, estúpido!"

She saw Lizzie rolling her eyes and grabbing the blanket in order to hide under it.

"Oh, no! Don't you dare-", she cried out, making attempts to rip away the freaking white blanket with the pale, blue roses, but Craig's hand on her upper arm held her back.

"Let me try", he whispered, kissing her temple. Charlotte sighed, swallowing all these egoistical, little replies about her being very much able to get her best friend out of bed on her own, because she knew she was acting like sullen child and she needed to be mature today.

Craig squeezed her hand, before sitting down on the edge, tugging softly on the blanket until a piece of her face was visible. She'd shut her eyes tightly and the thick, long lashes were set apart clearly in contrast to the bronze skin.

"Lizzie...", he whispered, tugging on the blanket again. "Lizzie, come one..." His voice was soft, beckoning, as if he was talking to a little child, hiding underneath the sheets in fear of monsters.

"Lizzie... I know it's difficult for you, but you can't hide here forever... Lizzie..."

Charlotte saw the trembling, the fluttering of lashes and how they opened. There was something light, something heartbreaking about the way she looked up to him and she finally understood what people meant, when they said that eyes were the gates to the soul.

Lizzie Bennet was one fucking brilliant liar, but her eyes betrayed her like the trembling hands of an alcohol addict.

"Come one, little pighead, I'll drive you and we'll make a stop at _Prêt-a-manger _on the way so we get some food into you, okay?"

Lizzie didn't say anything and even from the distance Charlotte saw the doubt in her eyes, but Craig didn't accept her reluctance and reached for her shoulder instead.

"Come on..", he whispered, pulling her into a sitting position before slinging his arms around her shoulders and lifting her halfway across his own. Lizzie Bennet was a featherweight.

"Take her bag", Craig prompted Charlotte before he left, swaying slightly with Lizzie on his back, her long, dark brown hair sprawled across his cotton shirt.

Charlotte had no idea what it was like to be pretty or even just special. She'd always been rather plain, the shadow, the sidekick, no person of her own.

With a sigh she stuffed some of Lizzie's things in the green bag and sent texts to Anne, Hetty and Lou before she followed her friends down to Craig's car.

Lizzie was already in the back seat, her head leaned against the cool window pane, sun glasses on her nose, headphones in her ear. She looked pale against the background of the tattered, red-orange cushions. White even.

The first time it happened, Lizzie and Charlotte had just moved in together. They'd met Craig and had been this laughing bunch of ignorant know-it-alls until, well until the day Lizzie stopped speaking.

Charlotte remembered her own confusion, the rising exasperation and then the quite, steady panic suffocating her, when Lizzie still hadn't shown any kind of reaction. She'd called Anne, hastily hissed words, matching her fear and nervousness and then Anne's sigh.

_It's this day, _she'd explained. _It's her way to keep control over herself, Charlotte. She's helpless. Let her be silent, but don't let her hide somewhere. Talk to her, take her to her classes, show her that she's not alone. Act as if it's normal. Tomorrow she'll wake up and it will be like it never happened. Give her that day of weakness and be there for her._

And that was the way it had been ever since then, the shock and the resignation, then the entertainment-program to keep her happy and only with reluctance Charlotte admitted that she was relieved when Anne or Craig or Lou and Hetty came to take over responsibility for her mute friend.

_My friend, _Charlotte thought and watched Lizzie through the rear view mirror. _My friend behind the glass, the girl so far away. The one, who seems to drown without anyone there to save her._

_Least of all me._

She was nothing special, not pretty, not beautiful, not charismatic, there was no difference between her and the billions of other people all around the world despite the endless lines of letters, words, sentences and pictures in her head, which seemed to grow longer and longer never to end. A plethora of information, that never seemed to be able to fill the emptiness.

She was a curiosity, an exhibit in the far corner of a museum, there to amuse the crowds with her ability to remember every little detail.

She was a freakshow, hearing the crowd's Oh and Ah without ever feeling their admiration, only incomprehension from her mother and her father's disinterest, her father, who knew nothing more about her than her sex and her hair colour. On good days he even remembered her subject, but most of the time it was just "that waste of money over there".

But even that had never mattered once upon a time.

In a trance she watched Craig through the window of his old car, marching into the_ Prêt-a-manger_-shop, buying a bunch of freshly cut fruits, sandwiches and coconut pieces, stuff you could shove into Lizzie's mouth and force her to eat.

Craig dropped his purchases in Charlotte's lap, their eyes met, he looked tired, but awake and Charlotte felt the lump in throat again, when she saw the worry in his eyes.

_I wonder if someone would worry about me so much, if I just stopped speaking one day, _she mused, discarding the thought at the same time. She was no Lizzie, she wasn't special, wasn't broken. She had no excuse to suddenly stop speaking.

Charlotte climbed on the back seat next to Lizzie and with a healthy dose of tickling attacks, threats and pure violence she convinced her to eat three pieces of melon.

She felt like Mother Teresa, in an Arnold-Schwarzenegger kind of way.

When she was little, being plain, being the little girl with the heap of tousled black hair on her head and the brain, that memorized everything, had never mattered to her, because she'd had James.

James had been her big brother. Tall, good-looking, charming... _caring_. He'd been the whole package and everybody, who'd met him just had to love him no matter what. He'd been everything and he'd been her world. When James had been there, the people had loved her, her curious, little gift had become an admirable attribute and James, sparkling, wonderful James had admired her the most and even her parents had loved her, loved her because James had done so.

They both had English names. The leftovers of a distant relative and her mother's obsession with English aristocrats and romance novels, but England had been a far away dream during her childhood until James at 21 had accepted a job in London.

Ever since then she'd lived for the holidays. For his free days, when he would come to Spain and she'd be the centre of his universe, for the long summer holidays, when her whole family would visit him in the city, sleeping on couches in her cousin's overpopulated house in the suburbs.

But then the accident had happened and Charlotte still remembered her mother's wailing and her father's ashen face the day they'd called.

That was the day she'd become invisible. The day, James had died,in between pieces of metal of what had been a silver BMW and the remains of car race gone wrong, with a blood alcohol level of 2.5 per mille and a bag of cocaine on the passenger's seat.

The slamming of a car door forced her back into the present. She looked up.

"I'm picking you home from Uni afterwards, okay? I got lectures until one, but I think I can manage", Craig said, while getting Lizzie out of the car and parking her on the pavement.

"Okay", Charlotte replied and checked her cellphone. "Anne will be here in a few and Lou and Hetty want to come over in the evening." She frowned. "Mus will be there, too, eventually. Did I forgot something?"

"Did you turn off her phone? In case her mother calls, I mean."

Charlotte held up the red cellphone. "Confiscated."

"What about Jane?"

"Better remains in the dark. Lizzie said, she won't be able to take it."

"She's her sister."

The black haired girl shrugged and gazed at Lizzie, who blinked into the pale sunlight behind her oversized glasses.

"She needs a jacket", Charlotte declared and got out of the car. Craig gave her his sweatshirt. "That enough?"

"Will do", she replied and draped the garment over Lizzie's shoulders. She could hear the loud basses even trough the headphones.

"Okay", Craig said and stepped towards Lizzie. "Take care, little one, okay? Don't let them get to you and come back soon, you hear?," He kissed her forehead and looked at Charlotte.

"Take care of her, will you?", he admonished. No kiss, no sign of affection this time, but Craig and Charlotte understood each other either way and when she nodded, they both knew that the other had gotten the message.

Charlotte guided Lizzie through the crowds of people, over the street and to the university buildings, where Anne was waiting impatiently for them.

She saw the relief in Anne's eye, when she saw them coming closer and she knew that Lizzie, too, had caught sight of the gold-eyed pixie, because there was this clicking noise in the air, like two pieces of a puzzle, that matched. It was difficult not to feel left out, but it was a feeling, Charlotte knew too well and one she'd gotten used to over the years.

"Finally!", Anne sighed and walked over to them, but instead of hugging Lizzie or greeting Charlotte like any other person, she just lifted Lizzie's chin and forced her to look her in the eye, a rather strange gesture considering their height difference (Anne was a head shorter than Lizzie).

"Na, na, na", she said and furrowed her brow. "Did you lock yourself up again? Stupid child." She shook her head. "That's your own damn cage, Sweetie. Instead of getting out of it, you lock yourself up there every freaking year."Again she shook her head accompanied by a heartfelt sigh. "But you're not listening to me, are you?" She regarded the headphones with barely concealed distaste. "Child, no one ever managed to drown out one's mind, neither through music nor alcohol. You're tilting at windmills, darling..."

Then she turned around to Charlotte, the golden eyes sparkling in the sunlight and as always Charlotte had the dreaded feeling that Anne Elliot could see right through her mask and she waited for years now for the day, when she'd finally call her out on it, when she'd tell everyone what a jealous, egoistical person Charlotte Lucas was.

But she never did.

"Did she eat something?", Anne asked and if it hadn't been this day and this situation, Charlotte would've probably laughed over the absurdity of it all.

"Three pieces of melon", she replied instead and held up the plastic containers. "And only when forced." She furrowed her brow. "Isn't it strange that we're talking about her food intake all the fucking time?"

Anne tilted her head to the side. "It's not like she has a lot of reserves, she could feed upon." She looked over at Lizzie, who stood there in deafening silence. "The child is no more than just skin and bones."

Skin and bones... If it just were that easy. If people were just skin and bones and the bit of flesh in between, then there wouldn't be so many questions, not so much insecurity, not so much _desire_.

They said their good-byes to Anne, when the girl with the golden eyes made her way over to the Social Sciences Building and Charlotte dragged Lizzie into the lecture hall.

Lizzie's movements were those of a marionette, her pupils scurried over people's faces without a hint of recognition. She didn't react to their greeting, nods and smiles and Charlotte was so fucking grateful for the sunglasses, because this way they simply thought she was still intoxicated.

She placed the half full plastic bowl with the fruits in front of Lizzie and pulled one of the headphones out of her ear.

"Eat", she hissed over the clanging and banging, coming from the speakers, knowing that Lizzie, despite her motionlessness, could hear her very well. "Or I'll force you to open your pretty, little mouth in front of Darcy just to swallow this stuff, understood?"

She saw the minimal reaction, the twitching of an eyelid and the muscles in her neck, those micro-movements, when she turned around and blinked.

Charlotte felt the lump in her throat again, swallowed it down together with her sympathy for the girl behind the glass and her own helplessness.

"I'm ruthless, Lizzie. Don't look at me like that and start fucking eating!"

She managed to look Lizzie straight in the eye for a whole fifteen seconds, before she couldn't take it anymore and buried herself in her anatomy book in order to lengthen the word- and picture-worm in her head another few inches.

Darcy announced himself with a bang, which made her script book fall down on the table and it was only a short moment of surprise, that caught her, when she saw how his gaze automatically zeroed in on Lizzie the moment he entered the hall.

She'd seen it coming, inescapable, inevitable, two idiotic magnets, who could do naught but crash and burn, destroying everything in their wake in the process, no matter how many lives it would cost – physical attraction was a funny thing.

Not that she had a lot of experience with that kind of thing or that Lizzie was even remotely close to admitting this attraction, that had the discretion of a nuclear bomb.

The lecture started and like a compass needle searching the north pole, Darcy's gaze always fell back on Lizzie.

"Miss Bennet", he called, for the third time that day and like the other two times before, Lizzie didn't even bat an eyelash behind her glasses.

"Miss Bennet, your opinion on this topic is desired", he prompted the mute girl and Charlotte started searching her brain, the word-worm in her mind for an answer with which she could distract the Professor long enough, but he silenced her with a motion of his hand, when she tried to speak up, his gaze still focused on Lizzie. He could've been a garden gnome, judging from the amount of attention she paid him.

"Miss Bennet!", Darcy barked again and Charlotte thought that his fascination with Lizzie, however unconscious, was going a bit over the top.

Her hands began to sweat, confrontations with authority figures didn't give her the adrenaline kick like they did for Lizzie, who enjoyed them way too much, but they filled her with anxiety, insecurity – She needed to do something before it escalated.

_Think, _she urged herself. _What would Lizzie do? What would Lizzie, wonderful, fearless, lost Lizzie do?_

She closed her eyes, ignored the the raised hand of her Professor and poured out the longest fucking word-worm of verbs and foreign words, predicates and prepositions and hastily built semantics, she'd stolen from her philosophy book about the Age of Reason a year ago, all over her unprepared Professor and she saw him blinking in surprise, when she opened her eyes again.

"Am I right?", she asked, leaning forward a bit, unconsciously trying to protect her friend, even though Charlotte would never admit that little gesture.

Darcy simply nodded and Charlotte let out the breath, she'd been holding the whole time.

_Weak, I'm weak..._

The rest of the lecture passed in relative peace, he didn't address Lizzie again and Charlotte, hiding behind her books again, still with an angry blush on her cheeks, forced Lizzie with some subtle threats, consisting mostly of Darcy, a public spectacle or a call to her mother, to eat the remaining pieces of fruit, which tied Lizzie enough to reality and present time, that she was able to walk down the steps on her own at the end of the lecture.

"Miss Bennet!" She groaned, when she heard his voice. Admiration and adoration to and fro, but couldn't the guy just leave her alone for five fucking minutes?

"Miss Bennet!", Darcy called her again, oblivious to the perfect imitation of a parrot he was delivering in the process. Lizzie would've probably walked right past him without a second glance, not seeing, not hearing anything, not part of this world and its residents, if it weren't for that teeny, tiny word and a hand.

"Elizabeth..." Charlotte felt a shiver running down her spine, when he called her by her first name. Judging from the cryptic pieces of information concerning Darcy, she'd collected in the past two weeks, she'd pieced together Lizzie's insistence at distance and her general reluctance. Hearing him calling her "Elizabeth", a name only her mother used, made the whole concept of pure physical attraction look ridiculous in comparison.

Lizzie froze. Charlotte saw the goosebumps on her skin, saw the muscles tensing in her neck, like a wild animal in a cage and Charlotte stared at the Professor's hand on Lizzie's wrist, damn sure that if Lizzie hadn't been locked in her a trance-like state right now, Darcy probably wouldn't have survived this day.

Without thinking she cleared her throat – seemed like she was really quite suicidal today – and the Professor looked up shortly, recognized her presence and forgot it at the same time, when he turned back to Lizzie.

"Miss Bennet?", he asked, as if he recognized his mistake, the hand around her wrist had loosened and was now holding her at her shoulder. His worried expression was mirrored in the lenses of her sun glasses and the Professor bent forward a bit, was now on eye-level with her, but Lizzie, Lizzie-behind-the-glass, the half-drowned, stoic girl with hands like claws didn't react.

"Miss Bennet", he repeated for the fifth time now, as if it was the only thing he could utter in her presence and slowly took off her glasses, bared the green and the pupils, which shrunk together when he illuminated them with an electric torch. The guy had a god-damn electric torch in his back pocket – Do you need to know more?

Charlotte saw how his hand trembled, she saw the spark, the desire, the all consuming urge to touch her.

It was always the same. People, who were practically stumbling just to touch her, to be close to her, to _possess_ her.

But Lizzie didn't want any of it, she threw it away, the admiration, the adoration... like a bunch of smelly clothing and Charlotte envied and hated this attitude at the same time, the carelessness, the absolute security of being loved no matter what.

"What did she take?", Darcy asked, taking in the green, the rigid features and her motionlessness. A hand pressed against her forehead, he tilted her head into the faint sunlight, streaming in from outside, while he measured her pulse with the other.

"She didn't take anything", Charlotte defended her friend, her gaze scurrying from Lizzie to Darcy and back.

"Miss Lucas, you can tell me, what she took. I found your other friend just a few days ago, so shoot!"

"She didn't take anything!", Charlotte snarled, harsher than intended, with just that amount of indignation, she'd so often witnessed in Lizzie's voice, when she'd defended her friends.

"Then what is wrong with her?", Darcy asked with a furrowed brow, while trying to make eye-contact with Lizzie, but her friend was just staring into space. "Miss Bennet?"

"She can't hear you", Charlotte explained tersely. "See?" She motioned towards the headphones in Lizzie's ears. "This morning it was _LaDispute_, can be _RiseAgainst_ now for all I know."

"But why?" He gazed from Charlotte to Lizzie in bewilderment, before softly tugging on one of the headphones until it popped out. Loud basses and screaming voices sounded, the musical illustration of Lizzie's inner life.

As if the loss of her headphones somehow woke her up, Lizzie blinked one, two times, before pressing her lips together tightly and stalking out the door.

Charlotte watched her go. "It's this day", she said to Darcy, who was also watching Lizzie's retreating form. "Today. She doesn't speak."

"She doesn't speak?" The astonishment turned into horror and for the first time she had his rapt attention.

"No."

"But why?"

"I don't know", Charlotte admitted. "She hasn't told anyone besides Anne. I only know that it's about this day. October, 15th. She's silent and we force her to eat."

"What about therapy-"

"Drugs? Medication?" She sounded a lot more cynical than intended but the Professor's overbearing attitude grated on her nerves. Fine, he admired her, but he wasn't the only one, so he should stop acting like he was the only person in this world caring about her. "Have you ever tried to get Lizzie to do anything, she doesn't want to?"

"It seems to work with the food."

She gave him the Charlotte-Lucas-version of the death glare, a lot less impressive than the Lizzie-Bennet-equivalent, but nonetheless a death glare.

"What about her parents, her family... Don't they worry?"

"They don't know." She squinted her eyes and looked him straight in the eye. "And it has to stay that way."

"Miss Lucas.." That the guy could actually show emotions was more than surprising and Charlotte was severely tempted to take a picture and show it to Lizzie as proof that the guy was no robot after all.

"No." She stayed strong. Blinked. "It's not your business."

And then she left.

She found Lizzie on the steps leading into the courtyard. Back straight, eyes kept forward, she was practically danced around by a little, scrawny man with thin, blonde hair, like he was Rumpelstiltskin and she his god-damn fire.

"Miss Bennet, what an absolute honour to finally meet you. My boss, Lady DeBourgh was so enthusiastic about your résumé and I have to say that we from Rosings Hospital-" The guy's voice nearly trembled with excitement and he was waving a hot pink folder in front of Lizzie's nose, the sharp rustling of sheets so close to her face, that the paper nearly cut her – Lizzie didn't even bat an eyelash.

"As I was saying, we really want you for the duration of your placement! Lady DeBourgh always says that it's important to emotionally tie employees as soon as possible to their workplace in order to guarantee greater efficiency and I have to say that I was completely overwhelmed by your résumé, simply overwhelmed!"

There was something funny about watching him dancing around Lizzie like freaking Rumpelstiltskin, how he talked and talked without catching a breath and Lizzie didn't hear a word, because she hadn't taken her headphones out.

"Top of every class, voluntary activities, more credit points than everyone else in your semester..." It was always nice getting it summarized and presented on a silver tray that no matter what your little peculiar gift could do, you could never compete against the pure brilliance of a genius.

Charlotte cleared her throat and the man with the ash blonde hair looked up and stopped his monologue for a second. His face was red and there was perspiration on his forehead, the sheets were still rustling and when Charlotte saw the pale blue of his eyes, panic consumed her for a moment, when she recognized him.

But the typical, uncomfortable silence, that usually surfaced after your best friend practically dragged you from the lips of the guy (and she wasn't sure if she hadn't bitten him in the process) didn't happened, because he only looked at her shortly before directing his focus back to Lizzie.

Charlotte felt like screaming. She saw the admiration, the adoration, the worshipping on his face and perhaps it had been the alcohol induced haze clouding her mind, but she was fairly sure, he'd looked at her the same way that night.

Mierda. Now he'd met Lizzie and Charlotte felt the well-known jealousy surging through her veins. Damn it, the girl was just sitting there, not even present mentally, how the hell could he already worship the fucking ground she was walking on?

"Mr-?" She stepped closer. She was a human shield today. Altruism was the fashion these days, right?

"Oh!" The blonde guy looked up, eager to introduce himself. "Collins", he said and bowed. "Mr. Collins to be precise. I work for Lady DeBourgh at Rosings Hospital and we are very eager to have Miss Bennet as our employee."

"Isn't that part of her scholarship?", Charlotte asked, because she practically knew every detail of Lizzie's full-time scholarship. "The placement, I mean."

"Of course", Collins was quick to reply and the sheets in his hand began rustling again.

"But this isn't just about the scholarship. We're offering Miss Bennet a parallel training with future job prospectives and Lady DeBourgh and I are very confident that the placement in January will just be the beginning of a long and prosperous arrangement. It's a wonderful possibility and even Miss Bennet has to see its benefits. Don't you think so, Miss Bennet?" With eager puppy eyes he looked down at Lizzie and nodded, when she didn't show any kind of reaction. "Just like I thought, you're just as overwhelmed by Lady DeBourgh's kindness as I am."

Charlotte suppressed a giggle. It was sweet in a way, how he nodded and teetered and how his watery, blue eyes scurried over Lizzie's face and there was a sharp pain in her chest, when she saw him looking at her with so obvious adoration, more submissive than Darcy's desire, less physical, but still full of admiration.

And she wanted a part of it.

Charlotte sat down next to Lizzie on the steps and opened a yoghurt cup, tipping the white plastic spoon against Lizzie's knee. Anne was right, when she said that the girl didn't have many reserves.

"And what are you doing for work, Mr Collins?", she asked and the sudden polite formality after being practically glued to his lips at Lizzie's and hers Welcome-Back-party, amused and stung at the same time.

The scrawny man with the blonde hair nearly bounced up and down at her words. "I'm working in Human Resources, Miss. I'm always looking for new additions to our hospital and Lady DeBourgh in order to ensure the best possible medical care at Rosings Hospital."

Rosings Hospital, she'd heard about it. One of the most expensive private clinics in London, not specialized in plastic surgery like the majority of them, but distinguishing itself because it was the absolute best in every department. Damn it, the hospital still had a working ER and that meant something. Not to mention that they paid their employees a more than generous salary.

RosingsHospital had always been Charlotte's goal.

She took a spoonful of yoghurt and pressed it against Lizzie's closed lips. "Eat", she hissed, as if talking to herself, because Lizzie wouldn't have heard her even if she'd been screaming the imperative and so Charlotte restrained herself to a simple nudge with the elbow, which made Lizzie's mouth pop open and before she knew what happened, Lizzie had a the yoghurt in her mouth.

Fantástico! No she only had to swallow it.

"Sounds interesting", she replied, trying to keep the conversation alive and to cover Lizzie's striking absence from it, while she shoved yoghurt into the little Zombie's mouth.

"It is! It is!", Collins assured her, without lifting his gaze from Lizzie's impassive face.

"So you do that often? Recruiting people, I mean?", Charlotte asked with a smile. Collins was nearly cute in his eager- and nervousness.

"Recruiting?", he asked surprised. "No, I'm hiring them. I've never met anyone, who'd refuse an offer to work for Lady Catherine DeBourgh!"

That was going to change for sure. Knowing Lizzie and her plans, her future job prospectives consisted of working for Médcines sans frontières rather than working at some fancy private practice.

"I can imagine", she said softly, while persuading Lizzie with a little violence to take another spoonful of yoghurt.

Collins nodded eagerly and tugged at the sleeves of his coat. "Even though Miss Bennet hasn't given me a favourable reply yet", he admitted suddenly, looking like a little school-boy, who's favourite cookie had been stolen.

"She will", Charlotte assured him, trying to suppress her bad conscience. Lizzie would give him a reply as soon as she was back from Zombieland and she already pitied the little man, who's glorious plans were damned to pop in a matter of hours.

"She doesn't seem to act like herself today", he remarked and his gaze flickered from Lizzie to Charlotte.

"It's this day", Charlotte sighed. "She'll be herself again by tomorrow."

"Oh!", Collins cried out. "But of course! Lady DeBourgh herself has told me so multiple times that timing is everything and that I had to perfect mine in order to succeed." He beamed at her. "Thank you, Miss. That has to be the reason!"

Charlotte smiled softly and amused at the same time. "No problem, Mr Collins."

Again the scrawny, little man smiled and his thin, blonde hair bounced in synchrony. "I'll talk to Miss Bennet tomorrow then. I have much to thank for, Miss-" He looked at her in embarrassment, when he noticed that he didn't know her name.

"Lucas", she helped him out, trying to ignore the sharp pain in her chest. "Charlotte Lucas." He beamed at her with such gratitude in his pale, blue eyes that she felt warm all of a sudden. Appreciation, gratitude even though the colour of his eyes was different, the expression reminded her of James. Good, wonderful James.

"No problem, Mr Collins." She shoved another spoon in Lizzie's mouth. "I hope I could be of help to you."

"You were." He smiled. "Miss Lucas. Charlotte Lucas."

* * *

They managed to get Lizzie home in one piece. Craig carried her piggy-back-style to the apartment and Charlotte saw out of the corner of her eye that Darcy was watching them. She shook her eyes and tried not to think about it.

Anne waited at the corner of the Social Sciences building and Charlotte gave up her place in the back of the car so that Anne could sit next to Lizzie and she tried to blend out the words, Anne whispered in Lizzie's ear like a mantra, and focused on the blaring music from the speakers. Craig caught her gaze when they stopped at a crossroad and winked. "Get a grip, Char."

Charlotte just snorted.

When they finally got home, some kind of party started. First Lou and Hetty came with the message that their parents and brothers were on their way, then Marley closed her Pub early, sitting smoking on the balcony, while Anne and Hetty set the table and Lizzie, Craig and Lou watched old episodes of "The-Nanny" on TV. Or rather, Craig and Lou were watching and laughing off their asses, while Lizzie sat in their middle, silently staring at the screen.

Charlotte sat on the balcony with Marley, breathing in the scent of cigarettes and trying not to feel left out.

"So, my dear child", Marley sat after a while in her typical dry way. She called Charlotte "child" for reasons unknown, while she had a bunch of different nicknames for Lizzie. Whatever, everyone had a soft spot for Lizzie. That was a law of nature. "How do you do?"

"I'm fine", Charlotte replied, staring at Lizzie's impassive mien through the window. "Just peachy."

Marley was still for a couple of puffs. Charlotte closed her eyes – passive smoking was her only vice.

"It ain't easy for her, ya' know?", Marley finally said, nodding towards Lizzie. "Has some tough stuff on her mind, the little bee."

Charlotte snorted. "Don't we all?"

She felt Marley's gaze on her, but didn't look up, even when the older woman stood up, stubbing out the cigarette in the flower-box with the geraniums. "Yeah", she finally said. "And you do good remembering that."

Then the door fell shut and Charlotte was alone on the balcony.

Mus and Sophie arrived around five with the twins from hell – otherwise known as Liam and Henry, who took over the apartment in a matter of seconds, jumping on Lizzie's lap at the same time, where they stayed, watching TV with their hands buried in Lizzie's hair, until their mother ushered them into the bathroom before dinner started.

Anne and Hetty had moved the table and every possible seating-accommodation from Craig's apartment, building some kind of dinner table together with Lizzie's and Charlotte's furniture, but even so the Groveland-boys sat grinning like two goblins on the with linen sheets covered, oversized armchair, Lizzie had bought in Southern London a few months ago.

Sophie had prepared enough food to feed an entire army and the laughing and joking and the Groveland-boy's little habit of hiding plastic spiders in the salad bowl, gilded Lizzie's helpless silence and Anne's efforts at getting her to eat something.

It reminded Charlotte of home. Before the accident. With James and her parents, who were so happy, so proud to have a son, one who made having such a plain and strange daughter bearable and Charlotte felt like she was the girl behind the glass now, cut off from the rest of the world.

She stayed in the kitchen, long after the cleaning up was done and Anne and Sophie had chased after the boys, happily chatting on the way.

After James' death, she often wondered if people would grieve about her own death as much as they did about his, if her mother would miss her like she missed her first-born. If her father would even register her absence.

It was a useless thought, but since her arrival in London, since knowing Lizzie and her silent days, she wondered if people could love her as much as they apparently loved Lizzie.

Charlotte paused in the doorway, watching the scene in front of her. Lou and Hetty to both sides of Lizzie's feet, Liam and Henry curled up on her lap, Anne, Craig and Sophie sitting on chairs and on the floor, talking animatedly, Marley who was standing in the doorway to the balcony, another cigarette in her hand and Mus, sitting across from Lizzie, talking quietly to her.

She looked like a drowned puppy, getting back into life slowly. _Warmed up._

Charlotte felt lonely, wanted desperately to be a part of this strange, unconventional patchwork-family, that loved each other unconditionally. But she was Charlotte, Charlotte Lucas, like Collins said. Plain, not special Charlotte Lucas with the photographic memory. She wasn't loved.

And she stood there, on her way to leave the apartment and hide in Craig's bed, when mute, drowned Zombie-Lizzie turned her head and looked directly at Charlotte.

She smiled. A tentative, weak, barely there smile, that tugged on the corners of her mouth, but a smile after all.

_Come here_, it said and the smile was like an outstretched hand.

* * *

**A/N: So what do you think? I want thoughts, guys! Give them all to me! I can take it;) **


	16. Chapter 15 Blood

**A/N: So, I'm back! Thanks a lot for all those lovely reviews you sent me, the reactions were different, but the last chapter was supposed to polarize;) I don't hate Charlotte anymore, she's not a bad person, but sometimes things from our childhood can severely affect the way we see ourselves when we grow up and in Charlotte's case it ended up in a severe case of self-loathing and self-destruction, trying to replace something she lost a long time ago (which never works mind you;) So you know how the story goes... Collins and settling down, pleasing her mom to no end... whatever.**

**As an announcement: I'm working on a little prequel to Long Live the King;) For those of you who like the story, it's about what happened before, after and during that drunk dial they talk about in Neither Saint or Sinner (it's ridiculous fun so far;) So if you're interested, just put me on author alert or whatever this stuff's called**

**Quoted lyrics:**

**Blood - My Chemical Romance**

**Vampire Money - My Chemical Romance**

**The Man I Killed - NoFX**

**King Park - La Dispute**

* * *

**Chapter 15: Blood, Tears &amp; Music  
**

"_I gave you blood, blood, galleons of the stuff... I gave you all that you can drink it and it will never be enough, I gave you blood... blood_", Lizzie Bennet sang with her eyes closed, headphones in her ears, the needle in her arm, directing an invisible orchestra with her left index finger – She was aware of the fact that she was probably pissing of the other people in the room royally, but honestly, she didn't give a damn.

"_Blood_!", she cried out, louder this time, while pressing and releasing the little, heart-shaped ball in her hand. She loved the irony. It was wonderful.

But her little bubble made of beautiful sarcastic words, tunes and the high in her blood was pierced, when someone suddenly lifted her arm and the unexpected skin contact practically took her breath away – in a violent, brutal, fucking close to the word "robbing" kind of way.

She ripped open her eyes and stared directly into the tinted black, which seemed to haunt her these days.

He looked relieved, smiled, practically _smirked_ and it irritated her to no end.

There was this harmless, short "Hello", the curt, but polite "Good day", the more precise version, in accordance to whatever time it was and the brusque, cursed-spiked "What the hell do you want here?". All these versions were burning on Lizzie's tongue like acid (fine, the last one more than the others) but when she finally managed to open her mouth, she simply sang along to the music.

"_I'm the kind of human wreckage, that you love!_"

She laughed, laughed out loudly, to sugar-coat the words, her own confusion, laughed, when she saw his surprised face, laughed even more to suppress the sudden feeling, rising in her when something changed in his eyes, an emotion she just didn't want to label.

Too much.

"Morning, Professor", she said with a smirk, tugging at her headphones until they tumbled out of her ears.

"Good morning, Miss Bennet", the Professor replied, the faint smile still on his lips and Lizzie was seriously tempted to just sing along, to put the way more provocative lines at the end of the song in his face, scream and shout, just to shock, provoke, chase him away. See how much he cant take until he runs.

But the fear to inadvertently use such a wholly inappropriate, completely out of context verb again, kept her from doing so.

She was afraid to see the expression on his face again, the flickering and flashing, the pull in her stomach and the throbbing down south.

The expression, which ripped her out of la-la-land at three in the morning.

It just wasn't fair if your nightmares suddenly sneaked out of your head to make a little detour to the playground once in a while.

"So, did you suck enough stuff out of my veins?", she asked distractedly – his god-damn hands were still holding her arm and she hated, hated, hated it, when her wrists were exposed like that. His fingers were warm, distracting and she shut her eyes tightly until it was finally over.

She thought, she heard him laugh, a soft, deep chuckle, sweeping through her body like a wave.

"Enough", he assured her, extracting the needle, controlling the blood bottle and disinfecting the small wound. "You're finished."

"Already?", she pouted. "And I just got in the mood."

"I can see that", Darcy replied, his eyes sparkling in silent amusement. Fuck, that was her part!

"Oh really?", she asked and her eyebrow, rocketing upwards like a freaking Space-Shuttle, cemented the impression of a body switch even more. "Pray tell me, when did I become a routine?"

He laughed and she wondered what kind of pills he took today. "Before we'll see something like that happen, we'll probably be on the verge of a Zombie-Apocalypse, won't we?"

"Don't we already?"

He just looked at her, the faint smile still on his face, while he put a band-aid on her arm.

"How do you feel?", he asked and the fleeting feeling of hands on her forehead threw her off track for a moment. _Wrong time_, honey, she reminded herself and blinked. His hands were still in safe distance from her head. Thank goodness.

"Wonderful!", she cried out and swung her legs over the makeshift hospital bed. "Just peachy", she added and jumped on her feet.

Stupid idea, she cursed inwardly, when the walls started spinning like a god-damn carousel on ecstasy. Really fucking stupid idea, she chastised herself, when the Professor gripped her shoulders tightly to keep her steady.

Physical contact. _Ouch_.

"Miss Bennet!" Ah, there it was again, the severe, humourless version, she'd gotten used to in the past few weeks.

"Careful", he said and for a moment everything happened in slow-motion. Forget the music, this was more like a fucking knock-out in the box-ring. Droning and painful.

She blinked away the nervousness with a pout. "You stopped the carousel!", she complained, arms slung around her ribcage, as if to get them out of his reach.

"The carousel?", Darcy asked bewildered. It was reassuring to see this well-known expression appearing on his face - she felt less like a part of an old "Bodysnatcher" episode when he did that.

"Such a spinning, turning thing with merry-go-round horses and other stuff on top of it, colourful with bright lights and music, they also use in horror-films. You know, fairs are scary, cabinet of horror and all that stuff."

"You're really good at changing topics, aren't you?" He looked at her intently.

"You asked me about the carousel, if you don't like my answer, take it and stick it up your..." She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "...whatever."  
"I don't really get the context information right now."

"Goodness, Darcy! Go and spin around in circles twenty times and then try to walk straight ahead, perhaps then you'll finally get it!", she laughed, shoving her index finger between his rips. Not literally, of course, even though her finger made contact with his white lab coat.

"You're associating feelings of dizziness with childhood memories?" He raised an eyebrow.

"You're implying that carousels were part of my childhood", she threw back with a crooked grin, grabbing her bag, while inside her head everything was still in motion, blurring the lines of his face and the space around him, but this time she was able to keep her body under control.

"So they were not?", he inquired, effectively blocking her last possible way of escape with another step towards her.

"Pray tell, do you get off on putting words in my mouth?", she asked teasingly, hands on her hips.

"It convinces you to answer", he countered, his face a fucking pokerface.

"Oh really?", she asked, her eyes lighting up with amusement. "I'm not Fort Knox, Darcy. Ask, whatever the hell you want to know and I'll decide if I'm going to deign it with an answer."

He gazed at her, a wary expression on his face, while she held eye-contact without batting an eyelash.

He blinked.

"Do you... Do you like carousels?"

She laughed at that, loud and clangorous. A deep, roaring laugh, that shook her whole body and lit up her face like a god damn picture of the Virgin Mary.

For a moment it was real, truthful and you could see the image of a little, spindly girl with bruised knees and dimples in her cheeks, laughing wholeheartedly about the cartoons on TV, shimmering under the surface of the nearly grown-up girl-woman in the makeshift hospital room, but the impression faded, when her laughter became hysterical and the faint smile on Darcy's lips disappeared.

"You're so full of shit, Darcy", she joked, escaping right under his outstretched arms, when he was distracted for a moment. "I thought you wanted to know, what kind of divine intervention turned me into this nuisance, that's constantly fucking up your life. Or that you demanded to know how to finally shut me up (not that that's possible in any friggin' way, for your information). But carousels? Didn't see that one coming..." Shaking her head, she made her way out of the classroom of St. Mary's Primary School, which they used as a rest room for the blood donors. There was definitely something morbid about looking at scrawly drawings of year one pupils, while they were busy sucking the blood out of your veins.

There were only a few people in the room, some of them lying on provisional hospital beds, two fresh resident physicians, Lizzie knew from med school, and Darcy, who followed her out of the room like a god damn puppy.

"So, we definitely have to coordinate our activities better in the future", Lizzie declared happily, while walking down the hallway to the nearest possible exit (the windows being no socially acceptable option), as if they were talking about the weather.

"And what makes you think that?", Darcy asked, his voice strained, while he tried to keep up with her.

"To prevent us from crashing and burning", she replied, just as good-humouredly as before. "We can't prevent meeting at university, but outside of school, we should try to keep the meetings with the "pain in the neck" to a bare minimum, don't you think?"

"You'll never let me live that one down, will you?", he sighed, hands buried in the pockets of his lab coat.

"No, probably not", she replied with a mischievous grin. "It's just too much fun."  
"You really have a strange sense of humour."

"I'm the life of the party", Lizzie said proudly.

"I knew that before", Darcy mumbled and Lizzie rolled her eyes.

"We can agree on visiting hours for Jane and Charlie", she suggested with renewed enthusiasm. "I get the days with an uneven number and you can take the rest, we take turns when it comes to group excursions and on birthdays we'll arrange different time slots."

"May I ask, what this is going to look like if it's finished?", the Professor asked, holding one of the doors open for her.

"A time schedule?" She looked at him with big, bright eyes. "The salvation of your mental sanity? Saving you the costs of a nice little trip to Bedlam?" She tilted her head to the side. "Perhaps just my good deed for this year. I really have work on some points in order to get on Santa's good list", she added thoughtfully. "Santa and I have a deal, I meet a certain quota of good deeds every year and he in turn grants me a new stereo equipment for Christmas. Everybody wins."

"Sounds plausible", Darcy replied. "However, Miss Bennet -"

"I'm a saint", Lizzie interrupted him. "But only the last three months of the year. Part of the deal is, that I can be a huge bitch the other nine months."

"You want to tell me that this is actually the _nice_ version of you?"

"Hey, shut up, Professor, I only tolerate insults from a few persons and you're not on the green list right now."

"What kind of - Damn it, Miss Bennet, stop changing topics, that's not -"

"Funny?", she asked with a smirk. "I find it pretty damn entertaining. But enough of that, I'll send you the time schedule via e-mail and I'd appreciate it if you could arrange Carol's time spots so that she can spend more time with her fiancé. She misses you and I'm not in the mood to play sober companion for a cokehead with attitude, not that you'd find me capable anyway...", she digressed, her eyes fixed on the nearest exit. A big, bright red banner with bold white letters, thanking people for their blood donation, was plastered on the wall above the doors.

"Miss Bennet!", Darcy shouted, grabbing hold of her elbow and forcing her to do a 180° turn, which brought her on eye-level with his chest. The name badge with the alliteration "Dr. Darcy", which was pinned there, would have brought her on the verge of a very serious fit of the giggles, if it hadn't been for the sudden physical contact, making her shrink back in defence.

"Our different opinions concerning treatments of drug addicts do not prevent us from acting like two adults if we happen to be in the same room. Be it at University or elsewhere and they do not, in any case, enforce a time schedule of _epic_ dimensions as if we were a recently divorced couple and Jane and Charlie our god-damn _children_!"

He had the audacity to actually look offended and the pitch black eyes seemed to blaze in anger, he blinked, one, two times and was promptly met with the widely grinning face of Lizzie Bennet.

"You could just tell me that you like me, Darcy", she teased and patted the air above his shoulder. "They teach that in kindergarten, you know? Expressing one's feelings verbally and all those skills. Makes communication _so_ much easier", she gushed, throwing the rather dumbstruck Professor a smile over her shoulder, while making her way over to the exit.

"And that's coming from the girl, who can't meet any question, let alone ones about her personal feelings, with a direct answer ?", the Professor shot back, closing the gap between them.

"Uh, frustrated much?", Lizzie asked happily. "You should get yourself a girlfriend...or visit your fiancé!", she added as an afterthought.

"I don't have a girlfriend -"

"That's _exactly_ the point!"

"- and no fiancé! How many times do I have to repeat myself?" He seemed a bit pissed at the turn this conversation was taking.

"What a pity", Lizzie commented Darcy's angry declaration. "Seems like I just lost a bet."

"A _bet_?"

"A bet", she confirmed. "I made one with Charlotte and wagered that you've got some blonde, botox-beauty waiting for you on Tahiti. I actually thought for a moment, I won, when I met Carol - But _no_..." She shook her head disapprovingly. "Another broken dream. Why didn't you just play along? This is going to cost me some fifty pounds and a favour."

"A favour?"

"Goodness, Darcy. Did you turn into some kind of parrot?" She shook her head. "A favour, Darcy. I'm sure you've heard of such things."

"As surprising as it may seem, Miss Bennet, I actually did." He held the door open for her and for a few seconds they stood there in the dreary, strangely blinding light of the fading October sun. "And you still owe me one."

"I owe you shit."

"You owe me an answer."

"I never said, you'll get one, only that I'll think about it."

He gazed at her, dark, brooding eyes and a "Don't-fuck-with-me"-expression on his face.

"I like carousels", she said, walking forward, not caring if he followed her or not. "They're magical. Spinning and turning things, made of creaky wood and music, the delicious smell of candy floss and merry-go-round horses with velvet saddles... What's not to like about them?", she said casually with an absent-minded wink of her hand.

"You're lying."

"Come again?" Lizzie spun around abruptly, the flaring up of anger in her eyes covering the momentary insecurity rising in her body.

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying!"

The dark eyes remained hard, boring right into hers and she didn't know if the strange, disembodied light made her blink rapidly or a if there was a freaking dust particle somewhere under her eyelids.

"I'm not sure from which book or series exactly you stole this touching description, my compliments by the way, but this is definitely not your own opinion."

"So you're reading me now, huh?" She raised an eyebrow, a silent provocation.

"No." He made a step towards her and she had to crane her neck in order not to break eye-contact. "I have no idea _who_ or _what_ you are, Miss Bennet, but you compare a carousel ride to feelings of dizziness and you just don't do that if the experience had been a pleasant one." He smiled faintly. "It's called logic, Miss Bennet. Simple deduction."

She opened her mouth, speechless, soundless, her fingers started to tremble and she felt the panic rising in her with the velocity of a god damn space-shuttle. Lizzie saw his hand reaching out, trying to touch her -

"I have to go", she interrupted him, backing away. "Jane's waiting for me."

His expression became resolute. "You haven't eaten anything yet, Miss Bennet."

"I've got some grape-sugar in my bag."

"You know as well as I do that it's not the same."

"It will keep me upright for the half hour or so it'll take me to get to Jane", she shot back, arms crossed defensively over her chest.

"Miss Bennet...", Darcy said and took a step towards her. "You-"

"Don't." She hunched her shoulders.

"Okay..." He raised both hands as if to show her that she was out of danger, that she was safe and he just looked at her, the same expression on his face, that had shaken her to the core just a good ten minutes ago. "Wait here for me", he said with a deep, calm voice. "I'm also on my way to Charlie and my shift is over in about fifteen minutes. So please, _just_ _wait here_."

She frowned. "I understand your language, Darcy", she spat out, unwilling to stay in the defence like a lost, helpless child. "Which is kind of a miracle, considering the universally acknowledged truth that you're an alien and here to spy on our technology."

But Darcy, instead of reacting to her insults with replies of his own like he usually did, which would only sent them both into a spiral of alternating, biting remarks, he simply gazed at her with this subtle smile around his lips, quietly whispering "_Don't_".

Before he turned around and disappeared in the building.

* * *

She needed music like other people needed nicotine.

Especially now, the days after. Falling was easy, was letting go, was giving up and jump... the difficult part was always the morning after, the confusion, the disorientation... the shame.

Silence was easier.

She was ashamed of her own weakness, for falling into the same pattern over and over again like a broken record, nobody had taken off the player. And yet it had never been about the exact events of that day, the October, 15th – days were just one huge metaphor, the only day in the year, when losing oneself was easy.

_It_, this giant, undefined _It_, that she couldn't even name in her head, was stretched out over more than one day, more than one single date. _It_ couldn't be contained, was elusive, was horror in its very own form, because it infiltrated her life like a virus, a memory, that just wouldn't stay in the past, couldn't be locked in its very own cage 250 miles northbound.

Normally she had her flashbacks under control, had perfected the techniques, that would get her out of these descents to hell, but they centred, concentrated themselves on this particular day and when it came, she was powerless, was a leaf in the middle of the fucking ocean and music was the only thing keeping her sane, while she was slowly, silently drowning.

And again she had those headphones in her ears, while she tried no to think about why the fucking hell she was actually keeping the promise, she gave Darcy and waited for him.

God, she hated breaks in her usual routine.

"Stupid", she ranted in perfect synchrony to the basses bouncing through her head, kicking the little stones, which were laying on the pavement and blocking her way. "What an utterly dumb, stupid, downright idiotic idea!" She turned around, for the twentieth time in five minutes, and walked back towards the primary's school entrance, cursing herself for not being able to just run away – like she normally would.

For a few seconds she tried again, running away, past the entrance and towards the next underground station, but her feet wouldn't play the game, they stayed put right next to the rhododendron bushes as if someone had glued them to the pavement.

"Fuck", she groaned, frustrated and exasperated, she sat down on the curbstone. "Stupid, sneaky little _promises_. Cutthroats, scoundrels, fucking _corsets_!"

She pressed her hands against the concrete floor, ignoring how the rough surface of the curbstone rubbed against her palms and tried to take deep, calming breaths. Anne taught her this, meditation, controlled breathing, even though Lizzie liked to call it prenatal class for hysteric mommys. It helped keeping the memories at bay.

"Emotional _blackmailing_, conventions, seedy, little_ freedom robbers_", she chanted like some kind of mantra. "Snares, fucking bastards, manipulative _psychopaths_ -"

The smell of cigarettes brought her back to reality and when she opened her eyes, she was staring directly at the crookedly grinning face of George Wickham.

"Hey, Septimus", he greeted her, when she pulled out her headphones and exhaled a small cloud of smoke.

"Hello, Vampire", she replied with a smile, ignoring the commotion in her stomach. "Looking for your monthly ration of liquid edibles?"

"Nice try, kid", he laughed with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and pointed at the band-aid on his forearm. "But this time for once I gave society something back."

She laughed, scratching with her nails over the hard stone under her fingers. "Isn't that illegal?", she asked. "You must have a completely different blood consistence, you sparkling corpses."

"Is that supposed to be insulting?", he asked and raised an eyebrow. "I'm a guy, I don't sparkle."

"That's what they all claim", Lizzie shot back and rolled her eyes. "And then you find them in some gay bar at three in the morning, _sparkling like Bowie in the morning sun_."

"Do you do this quoting-thing a lot?", he asked, grinning like a fool. "'Cause it's kinda cute."

"_I was not criminally insane, in fact I was found to be an otherwise caring and respectable member of society, a minor threat except for that one men I killed_", she replied with a sarcastic smile and ice in her throat. Something was wrong. He was still hot, still breathtakingly handsome and the contents of her stomach went mad when she gazed at him.

But something was different, the mood, the proximity, the missing pressure from Anne and Charlotte. Or perhaps it was just the smell of cigarettes.

"You killed someone?", he quipped and even though the whole thing was supposed to be a joke, it infuriated her either way.

"_I felt the burden of murder, it shook the earth to the core_", she said quietly, stubbornly staring straight ahead.

Silence.

"That's...", he said, suddenly serious, searching for words. "...deep", he said, but it sounded like he wanted to say "disturbing" and just didn't dare to utter the word.

She laughed humourlessly. "Every parrot can quote songs." She breathed in the scent of cigarettes and felt dizzy all of a sudden. Something changed in the atmosphere, he hadn't passed the test, she hadn't know she'd used. Subconsciousness could be a rotten, little traitor.

"You didn't call me." His voice was casual, but something in the tone, he used, made her shudder.  
"My phone is suffering from a severe case of the flu", she retorted, grabbing the curbstone for support. "Prognosis's not looking good."

"Hmm", he nodded, getting the message. "What are you waiting for?", he asked after a while, flipping the embers off his cigarette.

"For my lift, which still has to loose its lab coat." She rolled her eyes, her stupid promise still nagging at her.

"The Professor?" He shook his head. "Septimus, that's not a good idea."

"Oh really?" She raised an eyebrow. "Did he say some mean things to you in class? Believe me, buddy, you're not the only one."

"In class?", the vampire started laughing. "God, I wouldn't be caught dead in one of Darcy's reformatories!" He laughed madly, like it was the funniest thing since sliced bread. "No, no, kid." She didn't like him calling her that. He wasn't fucking Humphrey Bogart and this wasn't Casablanca. "Darcy and I grew up in the same bumblefuck of a town in Derbyshire. His sister and I... we'd been sort of engaged last year." He shook his head and took another draft of his cigarette, while Lizzie sat there frozen to the spot. "Darcy was against our engagement, god, he was mad as hell. He moved heaven and earth and..." He stopped, took a breath. "There was a car crash", he said quietly. "And when I woke up in the hospital, Darcy was there, giving me a cheque and telling me that I'd never see Giana again." Angrily he flipped the ash from his cigarette. "I burned the cheque, but I still don't know what happened to her, if she's fine, if she's even alive..." Again the head shaking. "End of story."

"That sounds terrible", Lizzie whispered, her nails scratching painfully over the curbstone.

"That it is, kid. That it is", the vampire nodded. "But it happened a long time ago. But Darcy... Take care, kid, he's kind of a control freak with a major OCD and when he doesn't get what he wants..." His voice trailed away at the last words and Lizzie felt the fear, icily dripping down her stomach.

She didn't say anything, didn't utter a single word, when he stood up to say goodbye, suggesting her to call him, when her phone was back under the living.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't know if she believed him, didn't know if it was even important, if he was really a monster-

"Miss Bennet."

Lizzie looked up, staring right into the steely features of William Darcy.

"You shouldn't smoke."

"I didn't."

He looked at her. For a stringy, sticky moment, before he nodded. She averted her eyes.

_Breathe_, the voice inside her head, which sounded so much like Anne, admonished her. _Let go._ _Breathe, child._ Out of the corner of her eyes she saw his feet. _Leather shoes_, he wore leather shoes.

She sighed, staring at her hands, the asphalt, the sky, which was looking like it was about to rain.

"So do you want to talk about the giant, pink elephant in the room?" She didn't look at him, was talking to the bushes on the other side of the street.

"Does it make a difference?"

She tilted her head, blinked. "Not if you're lying."

"It's not my story to tell."

"C.S. Lewis?", she said with a half-laugh. "Darcy, you need to come with a better rip-off."

"You believe him?" His voice was strained and she sensed the heat to her right as if she was sitting next to the god damn hellfire.

"I don't know", she said, whispered it to the rhododendron, whose leaves were moving softly with the wind, like nodding heads, showing their agreement.

Shuffling. "Congratulations, Miss Bennet. That was your first honest answer today." The sarcasm burned in the words even deeper.

"That makes you really happy, doesn't it?", she retorted, acidly sarcastic. "Must be a kinky kind of satisfaction."

The shoes moved a bit to the side. "Come", Darcy simply said and when she looked up, he was just a retreating figure on the horizon down the street.

"I didn't know you had a sister", she remarked, when she'd closed the gap between them. The frown grew even deeper.

"I thought, we didn't tell each other truths", he said stiffly, the finger's of his right hand slung around the car keys.

"No, that's my M.O. I'm not forcing you to do anything", she said, swallowing down the feeling of claustrophobia.

"Because that's so unbelievably fair?"

"Hey, accept that the world is a fucking horrible place and you'll get over the little injustices in life pretty easily."

"Thank you very much, Miss Bennet", he said sarcastically. "That was very informative."

She giggled. "You're also quite proficient", she said.

"In what?"

"Changing topics if it gets too personal", she quipped and shook her head. "We should definitely think about this time schedule again."

"Miss Bennet, do you really want to repeat that discussion? Something tells me that your sister won't like this idea of yours."

"So you admit that it's a possibility?", she asked with renewed interest.

"Do you turn every word into a death trap?"

"So it's a yes!", she declared self-satisfied and grinned. Darcy groaned.

"Why are you so caught up on that idea?", he asked exasperated.

"Because we two together in a room are just a catastrophe to happen", she declared, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Therefore I don't really understand why you so stubbornly insist on driving me from point A to point B all the time like I'm a god damn invalid. Do you have masochistic tendencies or something like that?"

He laughed at that and the sound surprised and confused the hell out of her at the same time. It was intoxicating and she felt the corners of her mouth lifting involuntarily.

"And what does it tell us about your self-concept, if you're so sure about my suffering in your company?"

"That I'm awesome at reading people?"

"Oh really? Convince me", he prompted her and the expression on his face was close to being – playful.

She smiled beatifically, like a freaking angel's statue. "Giana", she simply said and when Darcy stood there, frozen to the spot, she just continued walking.

"Leave Giana out of this!", he said coldly, the laughter whisked away from voice and face.

"Don't treat me like an infant", she said without looking at him. "Tell me what's the purpose of life and reschedule finals for a good three weeks."

"What kind of list is that?"

"One with similar absurd demands like the one you just made."

"What exactly has my sister got to do-"

"I didn't turn her into a fucking _cue_ _ball_ here!", Lizzie cried out, her eyes burning. "That's your and your buddy _Wickham's_ work solely", she hissed. "Instead of simply telling me, what your little problem is, you're playing me and your sister, _who I've never even met_, like footballs in your fucking mind game and I just can't stand it!"

"My history with Wickham should be no concern of yours.", Darcy replied stiffly, his face hard and unrelenting.

"You're right", she said slowly, stubbornly refusing to meet his eyes. "But that was before you started dragging out your little vendetta in my head. So if you want to warn me, like Wickham just did, or admit your guilt, then you have to fucking give me more than that!"

"Why should I tell you my family's history with Wickham if I don't even know if you'll believe me?" He'd curled his hands into fists.

"Try me", she simply said. "I'm more than a pretty face, you know?" She raised both eyebrows and a subtle smile played around her lips.

Darcy faltered a bit and sighed. "I can't", he said quietly.

"Why not?"

"Because it's Giana's story to tell." He gazed at her and she saw a myriad of emotions crossing his features.

"Okay", she said softly and his eyes widened at her tone. "What about the stuff I need to know?"

His eyes flickered, before his face became rigid. "Wickham is a liar", he said grimly. "If you're calling me a hypocrite, then he's the devil's god damn advocate. He cheats and drinks and he's got a serious problem with every kind of drug available on the market and he's only still enrolled as a student because it's cheaper for him." Darcy took a breath. "I haven't seen Giana smile for close to six months now and that's his fault."

Lizzie gazed at him, the desperation evident in his eyes. "Okay", she said again, just as softly as before. "I believe you."

He looked at her with something akin to amazement. "Thank you", he said quietly and they continued making their way to the car.

"But, hey, Darcy", she cried out into the companionable silence, before getting into the black Range Rover. He looked up. "Don't you dare think, that we're friends now."

"Because then I could stop with those damn formal addresses? He grinned and the flashing of teeth made her skin prickle. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"Fine", Lizzie said, leaning back in her seat with her knees pressed against the dashboard. "Then we're on the same page."

* * *

**A/N: Are they? ;) This chapter wasn't planned that way. Originally it should have been a party, a drunk Lizzie and lots of snogging (between vampire and septimus unfortunately), but as it seems Lizzie wasn't really up for it (the girl has kind of a soft spot for Darcy;) **

**Anyway, what do you think? I know I'm kind of terrible at responding to reviews, but that doesn't mean I don't love every single one of them;) So keep them coming!**


	17. Chapter 16 About Rain

**A/N: It's my birthday! I wanted to update faster, but then some friend and a weekend away from home came in between and yeah.. sometimes you need a vacation from a vacation!**

**So here's my birthday present for you! I'm twenty now! Yeah, it goes downhill from there;) I'm feeling like a grandma already... But now I got a Zippo lighter, a huge load of CDs and some poetry to inspire me! What do you need more?:p**

**Anyway, I think you'll like this one, can't wait to hear your reactions. We're nearing the end of act one (or in other words the Netherfield arc), two chapters, where shit's about to go down, stay with me though, I promise a happy ending;)**

**Soundtrack: Everything and I mean, EVERYTHING from My Chemical Romance, for Darcy add Blue Lips from Regina Spektor (That guy has a lot of naughty thoughts in this chapter, even I'm blushing;) **

**Disclaimer: I'm not Jane Austen, but Pride and Prejudice as a birthday present would be great! **

* * *

**Chapter 16: About Rain...  
**

It was raining like it was the goddamn Flood again when they finally reached Jane and Charlie's apartment complex.

"I think there's an umbrella somewhere in the back of the car", Darcy remarked and began looking for it behind his seat.

"Don't be such softy, Darcy!", Lizzie cried out, not even in her wildest dreams thinking that she'd wait for something so mundane like an umbrella. "Or did those aliens breed you sugar-based?" The past half hour, during which she'd forced Darcy to listen to the entire Danger-Days-Album, had improved her mood significantly, despite the constant whining from her driver.

"Charming", the Professor retorted, but the following words were cut off by the slamming of the passenger's door, when Lizzie left the vehicle without further ado.

"Miss Bennet!", he cried out, but Lizzie simply marched on with her arms stretched out right through the pouring rain, her face raised skyward, smiling brilliantly.  
"Miss Bennet!" She heard the slamming of the other door and then he was standing next to her, one hand held over his head, while the rain poured from his lips.

"It's raining!" She beamed with joy, a breathtaking, unbelievably happy smile. "Look, it's raining!"

"I see", Darcy growled, gazing doubtfully at the sky, whose floodgates where now open, but Lizzie just laughed and started spinning in circles, her wet hair a dark halo around her head.

"Come on!", she called. "It's fun!" She took off her shoes and began splashing around barefoot in the deep puddles on both sides of the street. "Look!" She kicked some water in his direction, laughing like a maniac, when he made several steps back before she started spinning again.

"Miss Bennet, it's cold", Darcy made another attempt. "It's raining, you're already rain-drenched and you just donated blood not an hour ago."

"Thanks for the information, Darcy!", Lizzie laughed over her shoulder, while she jumped through another set of puddles.

"Miss Bennet, what are you doing?" He'd given up the provisional roof and now crossed his arms in front of his chest in disapproval.

"It's raining", Lizzie replied, smiling brightly, as if that was some kind of explanation.

"I understand that", Darcy retorted. "But the more important question is, what are _you_ doing in the rain?"

"Dancing." She laughed. "It's raining, Darcy."

"On average it rains 145 days per year in this city", Darcy threw back, his eyes fixated on Lizzie's smiling face.

"Oh, hello Wikipedia!", she cried out and waved excitedly. "Didn't recognize you, old friend!"

"Robots, Aliens and now web pages?", Darcy asked and shook his head slightly. "Find the fault in this line-up...", he added grumbling and exasperatedly wiped away rain drops from his forehead.

A laugh. "I can't believe you know Wikipedia inside out, Darcy."

"Who says that I got my information from an online-encyclopaedia?", he retorted dryly. "Ever heard of guidebooks, Miss Bennet?"

"Do you compare yourself to a tour guide?"

Darcy groaned, but Lizzie just laughed. "Self-awareness is a virtue, Professor!", she cried out before walking right through another set of puddles. Thank goodness, the street was nearly empty at the moment, but the Professor's rigid posture and his disapproving expression could even dampen _her_ exhilarated mood.

She turned around. "Darcy!" He looked up . She came closer. "Have you ever danced in the rain?"

"I don't make a habit of it."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I knew that", she replied. "But we're talking about dancing in the rain not the waltz at some débutante ball."

"How do you know I have experience with débutante balls?"

Lizzie raised an eyebrow and looked at him silenty.

"Oh fine, I have", he admitted grumbling and cocked his head. "But pray tell, how do my dancing experiences play into whatever you're attempting to do at the moment?"

"Relax", she prompted. "Chill, this is not some penguin event. This is supposed to be fun, Darcy. You know the word, right?"

"What exactly makes dancing in the rain a fun experience?", Darcy asked slightly bewildered. "It's wet and cold and – you're lips are blue."

"My lips are blue." She grinned. "Good change of topic, Darcy." She started jumping from one bare foot to the other, right through the puddles and her movements and the thick rain blurred her field of vision.

"That was no change of topic!", Darcy cried out. "Your lips are blue and your feet-"

"Are red?" She grinned. "Wow, Darcy, look who's aspiring to become a poet! _Your lips are blue and your feet are red, oh I believe I might be dead!_"

"No, you're barefoot, Miss Bennet!" He sounded close to desperation. "And you're jumping around in the middle of a street, where god knows what could be lying around."

"Yeah and if I make a step to the side, a brick is going to knock you out", she retorted. "Not that I would mind anyway, so relax." She pirouetted.

"It's raining", he replied dryly and she stopped for a moment.

"Oh my goodness, he finally got it!", she cried out excitedly and pressed a hand against her mouth, when another giggle escaped her. "Then come on!" She stretched out both hands as if asking him to dance, but took them back when he made a step forward and danced down the pavement.

"_Rain on the green grass, rain on the tree, rain on the housetop, but not on_-" She didn't get to sing any further because right at that moment a giant, dark coat was thrown over her head and before she could say "knife", she was turned around and forced to make eye-contact with Darcy's deep brooding depths.

Her breathing became faster, more shallow and erratic.

"Don't panic", her tried to calm her down. "Look, I'm not touching you, okay?" He gestured towards his hands holding the coat tightly around her, but not making skin contact.

"Breathe", he prompted and she nodded, pumping oxygen through her veins. "Everything's alright."

He let out a breath, when she relaxed a bit.

"We're going upstairs now", he informed her. "No matter how much fun dancing in the rain might be, playtime's over now and we're going upstairs, understood?"

A defiant look crossed her features and she opened her mouth in order to voice her protest, but one arched eyebrow from Darcy shut her up for good.

"At least take your monstrosity of a coat back", she sneered and gingerly handed him the piece of clothing, before stalking barefoot towards the complex' entrance.

The Professor sighed, picking up her shoes, which were waiting half forgotten on the curbstone, half-drowned in a giant puddle and followed her into the house.

"Pray tell... this touching thing... is it limited to your wrists or does it extend over your whole body?", Darcy asked her two minutes later when they were standing together in the elevator – on opposite sides of course.

The mirrored walls got steamed up and Lizzie's dripping wet hair left moulds on the pane, when she leaned against it with her arms crossed tightly over her chest – she still hadn't put on the shoes again, despite the Professor's numerous admonitions to do so for the sake of her health.

"I don't care about the where and how", Lizzie replied without even a glance to the side. "Don't ever fucking touch me, or you as sure as hell will be missing some of those pretty white teeth of yours."

"Why does your tendency towards violence not surprise me?", he muttered, seemingly rhetoric, but Lizzie decided to do him a favour and deign the question with an answer.

"Because it fits into the pre-made picture you have of me", she replied. "_Anchoring_."

"Are you insinuating that I'm prejudiced?" He sounded offended.

"You're assuming that I'm violent", she retorted. "So be happy that it's nothing worse than a little narrow-mindedness."

They were silent and only the slight humming of the lift kept them company until Lizzie's phone started ringing madly.

"You're not going to take that call?", Darcy asked and pointed at Lizzie's bag.

"No", she replied, staring straight ahead.

"No?" There he was again: The parrot.

"No."

"Why ever not?" Oh, he was starting to understand this game they were playing and began asking real questions.

"Because logically speaking, it can only be one of four people, with whom having a conversation right now is either senseless or simply not desired." She sighed and cast a glance at him.

"Possibility one: It's Jane, which makes talking on the phone unnecessary, considering there are only a couple of metres separating us until our heartfelt reunion; Second: It's my mother and I'm really not in the mood for some mindless chit chat about Henrietta Long's long lost niece several times removed and her gastroenteritis, which, you know, is my responsibility to cure, because apparently I'm some fucking psychic and can simply do that over the phone, since that's the only thing my education is good for after all _or_ she babbles on and on about whatever motherfucking bird is now singing on top of the church steeple on Sundays." She took a breath after her little rant and tried to calm down a fraction or two.

"I didn't catch the bird reference", Darcy interjected, but again Lizzie cut him off by finishing her little list of reasons explaining why the world was the way it was and not differently.

"Third: It's that weird guy from Rosings Hospital, who wants to recruit me for his own scary, little freakshow and he doesn't seem to understand that I'm not _really_ into all that chain and leather stuff", she whispered consiprationally and Darcy swallowed rather obviously. "Or fourth option: It's Charlotte, who wants me to listen to said recruiting guy from Rosings Hospital and his proposition, which in case you forgot, I don't really wanna listen to, because -"

"You're not into chains and leather", Darcy finished for her, desperately trying to keep a straight face, which made Lizzie smile in amusement. Guys really had a one-track-mind sometimes.

"Yeah and on the other hand I'm kind of convinced that Charlotte is into human trafficking and wants to kick me out of our apartment any day now."

"Paranoia?"

"No, just common sense. You know, weird glances, strange phone calls. She also ate all my cookies yesterday and refuses to buy me new ones and most important of all..." Lizzie leaned a bit into Darcy, whisper-shouting: "She's talking. To. _Recruiting-guy_." She looked around, checking if someone was listening in on their conversation (which was kind of nonsensical considering they were the only people in the elevator, but Lizzie was still paranoid about cameras in Jane and Charlie's apartment building – Who the fuck knew what these two where up to in small, confined spaces?). "And she's _not kidding!_"

Darcy's half frown, half smile morphed back into its usual smooth mask and only a little twitch right over his right eyebrow showed his unease (and that he was uneasy was kind of obvious in Lizzie's mind – having strange intuitions about people was something coming hand in hand with being friends with Anne for so long and knowing what kind of images were now playing in his mind made guessing it a lot easier).

"Collins", he said abruptly, frowning again.

"I beg your pardon?", Lizzie asked with polite confusion.

"The representative from Rosings Hospital. His name is Collins."

"Oh", Lizzie said. "That's possible. He's constantly repeating his name like he's James Bond or something like that, but I named him "weird recruiting-guy" in my head and that name _sticks_."

"What does he want from you?" Darcy looked directly at Lizzie.

"Who?", she asked distractedly, still polite and her raised eyebrows were practically carved into her forehead.

"Collins. What does he want from you?"

"Recruiting me", Lizzie sighed and pressed her forehead against the cool mirrored wall. "He's offering me a job at Rosings, but thanks to my scholarship I've already secured my training in January there and unfortunately I'm not interested in selling my soul permanently to the devil."

She groaned when her phone started ringing again only two seconds later, a shrill piercing sound reverberating between them. "Persistent, little idiot", she muttered and closed her eyes exasperatedly.

"What exactly was Miss Lucas part of the bet?", Darcy suddenly asked as if struck by a lightning.

Lizzie grinned, half hidden by the mirror, while little drops of water were running down her body and her clothes stuck to her skin.

"She wagered that you were playing for the other team", she said with a smug grin. Darcy's mouth popped open.

"Just because I'm currently not romantically linked to a woman, be it girlfriend or crazy fiancé, doesn't mean that I'm homosexual!"

"Chill out, Darcy. We've all been there, we've all done that. No big deal." Lizzie shrugged and put on her best pokerface. "But if you've got pictures of your secret boyfriend, then give them to me. I'll get my 50 pounds back if I can offer Charlotte compromising photos as proof."

Darcy looked at her, thoroughly dumbfounded, while Lizzie just grinned.

"I'm not gay!", he nearly shouted, just at the same moment when the doors of the elevator opened to reveal the interior of Jane and Charlie's apartment.

"Thanks for the information, Darcy!", Lizzie laughed over her shoulder and marched, barefoot and dripping wet over to Jane and Charlie, who were sitting at the kitchen counter staring at the newcomers completely flabbergasted.

"Hello, my darlings!" She made a curtsey and her dripping hair and clothes created little puddles next to her red, naked feet.

"Lizzie!", Jane cried out and jumped on her feet, letting the red blanket, that had been wrapped around her shoulders, fall to the floor and before she could say "knife" Jane had slung her arms around Lizzie and threatened to choke her with all her love and affection.

"Argh!", Lizzie coughed and patted Jane's shoulder slowly.

"Lizzie", her sister whispered and hugged her even tighter. "Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie, what are you doing? Why didn't you call me when you didn't feel well?"

"Urgh, Jane, I'm fine", Lizzie managed to get out and cast Charlie a questioning glance, but her sister's blonde boyfriend just shrugged helplessly.

"Was it the date?", Jane asked, rubbing her shoulders. "Did it remind you of what happened? Oh, Lizzie, I'm so sorry!"

Lizzie froze, arms lifting halfway as if to reassure her sister that she was in fact fine, that she'd managed to be just fine for the past five years, when her eyes found Darcy's.

"You told her", she hissed with a glare telling him in no uncertain terms that he was so dead, that he could just make it easier for everyone and just jump straight out of that window over there. "You patronizing, little -" There were a lot of possible four-letter words she would have liked to direct at him, but considering the circumstances (and their current company) she restricted herself to a sneered, venomous "_traitor!_".

"Lizzie...", Jane chided her. "What's the meaning of this? What was up with you that day? Darcy said -"

"_Darcy_", she spoke the word with an acid sweetness, "has no idea what he's talking about. I was tired and I nearly fell asleep during his lecture. Really, I'm deeply sorry, if my inattentiveness hurt his ego in any way, I know how sensitive it is."

"Lizzie..."

"Jane, I can't breathe!"

"Oh, okay..." She let go of her and finally Lizzie could take a breath again. She cast the Professor another menacing glare to which he simply responded with a blank expression on his face. See? _Alien_.

"Oh, you're wet!", Jane suddenly cried out, when she took in her own rain-drenched sleeves.

"Am I that obvious?", Lizzie asked with a crooked smile.

"Why are you soaked to the bone?!"

"It's raining outside?" She phrased it like a question this time.

"You're barefoot."

"I danced!", Lizzie said proudly and lifted some strands of hair for closer scrutiny. "But Darcy's a killjoy and forced me to stop "for the sake of my health" as he puts it." She shook her head, while Jane let out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a laugh and whispered a quiet "Thank you" to Darcy, who acknowledged it with a sharp nod of his head.

"I heard that!", Lizzie called from the kitchen, where she was busy taking a bottle of water from the fridge.

"You're dreaming again", Jane retorted and picked up the discarded blanket from the floor.

"Nope", Lizzie replied and closed the fridge. "Darcy's here, so put on your Halloween costumes because it can only be some kind of freakish nightmare."

Jane and Charlie looked at each other uncomfortably, while Darcy clenched his fists.

"Thank you very much", he growled and let her wet shoes fall to the floor with a dull thud. He cast Charlie a glance, telling him not to ask any questions and turned around. "I'll go get changed", he announced and closed the door to the guest room with a loud bang.

"Always such a sunshine", Lizzie commented and ignored Jane and Charlie's facial expressions. "And how are you doing, my lovelies?", she asked, while peeling off her drenched jacket.

They looked at each other sheepishly and Lizzie caught the expression. "What's up?", she asked, her voice suddenly several inches more serious. Her eyes fell on the kitchen counter.

"Oh, No! What happened?", she cried out, pointing at the plate with the sushi on it and the two glasses of red wine.

"Why do you think that something has happened?", Charlie asked, while Jane was maltreating her lower lip.

"You're eating sushi!" Lizzie's hands were shaking, while her eyes jumped from Charlie to Jane. "Jane's only eating sushi when she feels bad."

She looked expectantly at the couple in front of her and Charlie's gaze travelled towards his girlfriend, slowly followed by Lizzie's.

"It's... nothing... nothing happened", Jane spluttered, before bursting into tears and fleeing the room as if the four horsemen of the apocalypse were chasing her. Both of them cringed when the door to her bedroom fell shut, but instead of running after her sister, Lizzie, little, soaking wet Lizzie with her smudged eye-make-up, came dangerously close to Charlie.

"What did you do?", she asked menacingly, her eyes contorting into tiny slits. "What did you do, Charlie?", she asked him again when he didn't answer her immediately.

"What, I... I... I haven't done anything!", Charlie stammered sounding frightened. "She came home a mess and wouldn't tell me why!" His voice pitched higher. "I swear Lizzie, I've got no idea what happened!"

He sounded desperate, but Lizzie had come across a great number of really fucking great actors in her short life, including herself of course. She squinted her eyes. "I know we didn't have this nice, little conversation yet, because I thought it was unnecessary judging from the way you two were all over each other and because you seemed rather... _harmless_ in my opinion, but -"

"Lizzie, I didn't -"

"So let's get this straight once and for all", she cut him off, her voice threatening. "If you break my sister's heart, just a teeny tiny bit, I will personally see to it that you're castrated, murdered, revived and then thrown to the sharks, exactly in that order, are we clear?"

Charlie looked at her with big eyes, but then his jaw hardened and he clenched his fists.

"Lizzie, I don't know what the hell made you think that I could actually hurt Jane in any capacity and I'll let it pass for now, because I can understand family loyalty quite well." He stood up. "But honestly, that's none of your business, because I'm _not_ one of those guys and this, however well-intentioned little threat, is _not_ necessary."

Lizzie stared at him, trying to figure out if this man had so much as laid a finger on her sister, but only squeaky clean honesty blinked at her and she nodded.

"Fine", she said and smiled. "You passed, Charlie."

The blonde guy let out a sigh. "Thank goodness", he said. "You're really terrifying, Lizzie, for someone so tiny that you could fit right into my pocket."

"No Top 40 Charts hits, Charlie. Don't go all Milow on me, you know that."

He smiled. "Yeah, I got that list." He shook his head. "And it's really fucking long."

"That's my job." She cast a glance towards the closed bedroom door and sighed. "I'll take care of it", she said and disappeared, still rain-drenched, still barefoot in the hallway.

"Jane", she whispered, knocking tentatively at the door to Jane and Charlie's bedroom, before she opened it and slipped in. Her sister was sitting Indian style on the King sized bed with the burgundy bedspread, a packet of Kleenex next to her.

"Jane, what's wrong with you?", she asked worriedly and wiped away some errand strands of blonde hair, her sister's blue eyes were bloodshot and swollen.

"Janie..." She crouched down beside her, trying not to make a mess of the ridiculously clean interior of the bedroom, which was, considering the state her clothes were in, rather difficult.

"It's... nothing", Jane sobbed, hands pressed against her face.

"You were never particularly gifted at lying", Lizzie said softly. "Come one, just tell me, whose balls you want me to cut off."

That made Jane laugh. "You don't have to... cut off anybody's balls", she coughed out, the poor child was suffering from a hiccup now.

"Really?", Lizzie asked amused. "It's fun, you know?"

"I can...imagine." Even drowned in tears and with her hair in disarray, Jane Bennet still looked like an angel. "You always had a... rather violent streak."

"Believe it or not, but you're not the first person to tell me", Lizzie joked good-naturedly.

"Oh", Jane said. "Darcy? You know, Lizzie, you really should be a lot nicer-"

"Yeah, yeah, bla, bla, Egypt is a hot country." Lizzie rolled her eyes. "Don't change topics, Janie. What has your lace underwear in a twist today?"

Reluctant or not, the last remark got Jane laughing. "It's nothing", she said again, when she'd calmed down enough. "Nothing important."

"Jane..." Lizzie could also pull off the big-sister-act if necessary and her raised eyebrow was pretty much Hollywood-style. "Charlie brought you sushi, the poor guy's nearly sick with worry."

"I thought he was deathly afraid of you stealing his crown jewels", Jane retorted with a smile.

"Just for two seconds and that's not the point, dear sister of mine. What's. _Up_?"

Jane sighed and twisted the handkerchief in her palm. "It's the headmaster", she said quietly. "At my new school. He's acting...strange."

"What does that mean?", Lizzie asked sharply. "Did he touch you, Jane? Shall I cut of _his_ balls?"

"No!", Jane cried out. "It's not like that. He... he does..he's..._weird_. He's always making suggestive remarks about him and... me and that we should meet up sometime... for drinks or something and he... he's watching me... all...the time", she finally admitted. "He's a bit scary."

"A bit?", Lizzie repeated. "Does that guy know that you've got a serious boyfriend?"

"Yes!", Jane exclaimed. "I mentioned it right at the beginning at the job interview and I always tell him so, when he's making insinuations like that, by talking about how great Charlie is and all that, but he never seems to _listen_."

"Perhaps seeing is believing and Charlie needs to show up there some afternoon. To rub it in, you know?" She made a wagging motion with her hand.

"That's impossible", Jane said quietly. "I can't tell Charlie."

"Why the hell not?", Lizzie asked flabbergasted.

"Because this jealousy-thing is a constant strain on our relationship. He doesn't like it if strange men show their interest in me...he's...he's insecure... That's one of the reasons, I moved to London in the first place."

"You moved to a completely different city for a guy so that he's not suffering from unrealistic bouts of jealousy all the time?", Lizzie repeated. That's..." _Fucked_ _up_, came to her mind, but Jane was faster.

"Love", she said softly. "That's love."

Lizzie looked at her sister, replies ranging from_ "That's not love, that's possession"_ to _"How fucking insecure has a guy to be in order to demand a move to another city just so that it his tiny ego won't be crushed?"_, burning on her tongue like acid, but a glance towards Jane showed her that none of these Anne-inspired advices would be appreciated right now.

"You could always ask Darcy", she suggested, one arm loosely draped around Jane's shoulders, not caring about her drenched clothes.  
"Darcy?", Jane repeated. "What has Darcy got to do with this?"

"Well, you could ask him to pick you up after school some time. The Professor can be all kinds of scary and if your headmaster sees him, he'll be running for his life, I'm sure."

Jane looked at her in thinly veiled astonishment. "You _trust_ him!"

"I never said that!", Lizzie defended herself, furrowing her brow.

"But of course!", Jane cried, suddenly giddily excited like a little child (she was also clapping her hand, like the cheerleader on ecstasy she was). "You like him!", she squeaked and threw her hands in the air.

"I don't!", Lizzie cried out, feeling the panic rising in her chest. "I just acknowledge that the guy has _some_ redeeming qualities despite him being a huge pain in the ass all the other time."

"Oh, you like him!", Jane assured her with a smug smile, wiping all the tears from her face. "You like, like,_ like him_!" Lizzie just groaned.

"But perhaps you should apologize to him", Jane suggested. "You called him a nightmare not ten minutes ago. _And_ a traitor."

"That was on purpose."

"It's not nice either way and it's not really helpful if you plan to ask him a favour", her sister reminded her.

"No, _you're _the one, who wants to do that", Lizzie clarified. "I'm just the pretty sidekick."

"Lizzie..."

"Oh fine, fine, I'll do it", Lizzie grumbled into Jane's shoulder. "But only because your Mum-voice is scary."

"Good girl", Jane applauded her. "That's really helpful, considering _that you like him_!"

"Jane!", Lizzie cried out in a whining voice, but her sister just laughed.

"Yeah right, you give me relationship advice while you don't even know how to tell your boyfriend the fucking truth", Lizzie scolded her and stood up. "You need to tell Charlie", she admonished Jane, who was looking at her with big, blue eyes. "He'll find out sooner or later. Besides, lies in a relationship are like termite infestation, eventually it will all come crashing down and I don't want to be the one picking up the pieces." She shook her head. "That's just nasty."

Her sister still stared at her. "Wow", she said after a while. "When did you become so wise, little sister?"

Lizzie winked at her. "Since I spend way too much time with Anne, the pixie. Stuff like that rubs off, you know?"

"Oh!", Jane exclaimed. "How's Anne? Did she and Wentworth finally reconcile?"

Lizzie snorted. "God, no! The raven princess is stubborn and proud like a donkey and Anne is slowly but surely going to Bedlam. She says that she's just fine, but these constant meet-ups with Lou and Hetty and the raven princess are getting to her nerves. Now the Groveland-twins also want to take Wentworth with them to Lyme for the Christmas Holidays and I've got no freaking idea how Anne wants to survive that, but she says it's all tutti frutti." Lizzie rolled her eyes in frustration. "And she claims that _I'm_ the queen of pretending!"

"Will you go with them?", Jane suddenly asked, her expression anxious.

"Where? To Lyme?" Lizzie tilted her head to the side. "Perhaps. I'm not really sure if I can take the whole Anne/Wentworth dynamic if those two don't make up until the 24th , but other than that, the Horror-twins and I still have a deal open."

"You're not coming home for Christmas?", Jane said, her voice choked. "Mum and Dad..."

"Not now, Janie", Lizzie said tensely and clenched her fists, feeling hot, boiling anger rising in her chest. The all too familiar feeling of being pressed into something you no longer fit into.

"But Lizzie-"

"_Jane_..."

"Lizzie, you haven't been home last Christmas and you're also not coming home any other time. Mum and the younger girls are always asking-"

"Jane, not now!" Lizzie's voice became sharper and Jane jerked back at the sound. "I'm sorry", Lizzie said, more quietly now. "But I don't want to discuss this with you right now, just tend to your own problems, alright? I'll go get changed now."

"But Lizzie-"

"See you _later_."

She closed the door and took a deep breath, trying to calm her trembling hands.

"Miss Bennet." His voice scared her for just a second and it took a while until her heartbeat was steady again.

"Darcy..." She looked at him. He'd changed his clothes, was now wearing jeans and a soft grey cotton shirt with long sleeves, his hair wild and still wet from the rain outside, but the fact that he was _barefoot_ did things to her body, that scared the absolute shit out of her.

He stood across from her, not a meter apart and gazed at her with worry in his eyes.

"Darcy, I-", Lizzie started, but was interrupted when he stretched out a hand, nearly touching her bare shoulder. She jerked back.

"You've got a tattoo", he remarked and stared at the spot where the black lines where crawling over the skin of her shoulder, right under her thin, white,decidedly _wet_ tank-top. Thank goodness for black bras.

"I know", she said, retreating a few steps until her back made contact with the wall behind her.

"What is it?", he asked, actually curious.

She bit her lip. "A tattoo", she then said, eyeing his outstretched hand with caution.

He noticed her glance and let it drop. "I'm sorry", he said, turning around.

"Darcy!", she called after him, slightly breathless. He turned around halfway, meeting her gaze. "About earlier..." She made a vague gesture with her hand. "I'm sorry", she said quietly and he nodded.

"I knew it", he said cryptically. She let go of the wall and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh really?", she asked. "Because two minutes ago I certainly didn't."

She walked right past him into the kitchen, missing his head shake and the faint smile around the corners of his mouth when he followed her.

"Hey, Charlie!", she called to the blonde man, who was looking a little lost in the middle of the giant kitchen. His head jerked up and he stared at her as if she was the holy Virgin Mother and David Beckham in one person.

"How is she?", he asked eagerly like a young puppy.

"Better", Lizzie said. "But you two definitely have to talk." Charlie nodded, still overly eager like a little dog, while Darcy was watching them silently.

"Charlie...", a voice called tentatively from the doorway and everyone assembled whirled around just to see Jane standing there with her tear-stained face, looking like a small child.

"Jane!", Charlie cried out, happiness and relief so obvious in his smiling face, when they fell into each other's arms.

Lizzie looked away from this rather sickening display of domestic bliss and started sipping on her water.

"So I gather, you two are not really up for a night out, right?", she asked casually. "There's a concert at a club somewhere in Central London. Charlotte and Craig are being killjoys and don't want to go, which I can't really understand, because this concert is about _being a killjoy_, but they didn't really like my joke", she complained. "So I kind of hoped I could get you guys to come with me."

"I think we'll stay in", Charlie said, gazing lovingly at Jane, who'd snuggled against his chest with her eyes closed, looking blissfully content.

Lizzie nodded in resignation. "No problem", she said with a sigh. "I can always take the Tube."

"I'll drive you", Darcy suddenly announced from straight across the counter and it sent cold shivers up and down her spine.

"Oh No!", she wanted to cry out, to scream, shout that no way in hell she would get into a vehicle with him again after this morning, after this little talk in the hallway, but Darcy's determined, Jane's serious and Charlie's overly happy expression showed her that there was no getting out of this misery.

She was so screwed. So. Fucking. _Screwed_. Why the hell did this guy want to drive her around town all the freaking time?

_Alien_.

* * *

The basses were chasing the adrenaline with the velocity of a rifle bullet through her veins, repeating the stumbling, rumbling, breaking down over and over again, while the frontman's screeching voice drowned out her mind.

She had no feeling for time or space, it could have been a heartbeat passing by, the fucking fraction of a second since she bolted. It could have been an eternity. Time was meaningless, the night was the moment, where you can pretend, act as if. The illusion would only fade and pass with the sunrise sending rays over city roofs and asphalt streets. Burning, burning, _burning_.

She was drunk. Not high, not totally insane, but seriously drunk and it changed her environment into more chaos, more blotches of colour consisting of bodies and light, more drowning disarray made of alienated lyrics, finding their way into her head in choppy phrases.

She knew what she was doing. That was the strangest thing.

She knew the _how_ and the _why_, fuck, she could even pinpoint the _time_ if she wanted to. She could diagnose herself, knew that she was _running away, repressing, compensating_. Fuck, she knew every word in the book and it still wouldn't help her get out of this hole. She was caught in a cycle and she hadn't learned the resignation yet, which came hand in hand with Buddhism. Well, _fuck_.

It was a strange mix between wanting that bar of chocolate from the fridge, even though you knew it was bad for you and the overwhelming urge to just survive, no matter how. She was lost, hungry, captured with no idea how to do things differently. How to _cope_ differently.

The only consolation was that it would soon be over. The music, the hyperactivity, the goddamn feeling of being high in a really shitty way.

The dragging pain in her legs.

She was able to predict herself, her body was a fucking pendulum, swinging from deadly silence to hyperactivity, from emotional recall to oblivion.

The world around her started spinning, the people, the faces, she opened her mouth to scream in agony, but then there were arms around her, arms, that held her, lifted her up, held her tight.

"I got you", the voice close to her ear whispered and then she was pressed against another body, she lost her balance, stumbled, only to be caught again in his embrace.

"I got you, Elizabeth", the voice whispered, _male, deep, soothing_, in her ear and she crawled closer towards the warmth. "Everything's going to be alright."

The music died down, cold greeted them suddenly and she turned her head so that her nose was buried in the crook of his neck, while he carried her outside.

"You smell good", she mumbled and sighed. He laughed. _Darcy_ laughed!

"That's good to know", he said and his grip around her tightened.

"Really good", she whispered.

He brought her to his car, placing her gently on the passenger's seat. Her head bumped against the window pane, there were noises, car doors opened and closed, then the sound of a roaring engine.

"Where are you taking me?", she mumbled against the alcohol-induced slurring.

"Somewhere safe", Darcy replied, revving the engine.

She laughed, this half forgotten, self-ironic, drunken laugh. "And where's that?", she asked and her head bumped against the glass pane again. "'Cause I'd damn well liked to know _that_ address."

The engine roared again.

"How are you?", Darcy asked after a while and something about that sentence and the way he pronounced the words wasn't quite right, but she wasn't clear enough in her mind to pinpoint what exactly was wrong.

"Just peachy", she replied, her eyes shut tightly.

They were silent, the roaring of the engine the only sound invading their minds and for the first time in days, she felt safe.

"Don't sleep!", Darcy's voice reached her ear. "Come on, stay with me..."

"Wha-", she half shouted, lifting her head and blinking into the red-blueish lights of the city at night. "What do you want now, Darcy? I'm fucking tired."

"You can sleep soon, alright? But stay awake with me, we're nearly there."

"I'm tired", she whined.

"Two minutes. No stay with me, Elizabeth... _Lizzie_, come on!"

She groaned, now the world started spinning again, the nausea crawled back up her stomach and throat and she wanted nothing but to sink into this jet black coma, this warm and soft black, luring and calling her like a siren on a rock in the middle of the fucking ocean.

"Lizzie, what about your tattoo?", Darcy suddenly called and she felt a hand shaking her shoulder. "The one on your back. What is it?"

"Phoenix", she mumbled, pressing her forehead against the cool glass.

"A phoenix. Why a phoenix?" He sounded panicked and she wanted to tease, provoke, tickle him, but she couldn't think of a retort. Her mind was blank.

"Because they arise from the ashes", she mumbled. "They burn, but they don't die."

"Good, what about the colours?" Colours? What colours was he talking about?

"Black", she whispered. "Red and blue."

"Blue? Why blue?" He made a sharp turn left and her head bumped against the window another time.

"Ouch", she mumbled and tried to find something to hold on to.

"I'm sorry." She felt his hand on her shoulder. "Why the blue, Elizabeth?"

"Don't be such a pain in the ass, Darcy", she complained and wiped his hand away.

He laughed. "Come on, why the blue?", he repeated and took another turn, this time to the right.

"Because it looks pretty. Especially as a shiner around your eye."

Again the laugh. "Lizzie..."

She groaned and held her head. "Shadows", she muttered.

"Pardon?"

"Shadows, you parrot!", Lizzie nearly shouted and pretty much jumped up from her seat. Too bad that there was still the seat belt holding her back.

Again the disembodied laugh. "Calm down, we're nearly there", he said and then finally, _finally_ the car halted.

"Where are we?", Lizzie grumbled, when he opened the passenger's door and gently lifter her up.

She practically fell into his arms and Lizzie tried to ignore the strange pull in her chest, when she inhaled his scent.

"Somewhere safe", he said again and she blinked, trying to identify the houses around her, but none of them were familiar.

"Why are you doing this?", she asked, her eyes half closed. He held her tight.

"I could ask you the same", he replied, wiping errand strands of hair from her face. Her features were pretty much glowing in the pale light from the lamps on both side of the street.

"Don't try it", she mumbled, half hidden against his chest.

"What?", he asked, lifting her chin, her eyelids were fluttering uncontrollably. "What are you talking about, Lizzie?"

"Understanding me. Don't try it."

"Why ever not?", he frowned. His hands were warm against her skin.

"'Cause I don't do it myself." She sighed and tumbled forwards. He caught her.

"Perhaps then I can do it", he said, warm fingers stroking her cheekbones. "Understanding what you can't understand."

"No", she vehemently shook her head and nearly fell from his grip. The cool night air was twirling her hair around her head like some strange kind of halo and it made her shiver. She was still only wearing her tank-top and a thin jacket.

"Why?"

"Because I'm afraid of what you'll find."

She fell forwards, no longer able to keep her balance. She was tired, so fucking tired. He caught her again and she buried her nose in the crook of his shoulder. Then they were arms around her shoulders and some, which caught her knees. Then a change in the atmosphere, another temperature, a multitude of new scents when he opened the door and walked into the hallway.

"You're crazy", she mumbled, her hands slung around his arms and shoulders.  
"Pardon?" He wasn't even slightly out of breath and he was carrying her up the stairs of this goddamn apartment complex.

"You're crazy!", she declared, louder this time. "Totally insane! An alien. _Alien_!", she yelled into the darkness and she could hear him laughing, while he carried her up the stairs.

"Where are we?", she asked for the third time, when they halted in front of a door on the top floor. He turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

"Home."

She looked at him. "Darcy -", she protested, to tired and drunk to put up more of a fight. He lifted her up again and she fell against him boneless.

"Shhh", he hushed her "_Shhh_."

She felt him moving trough the apartment, opening doors and then she was placed somewhere. _Soft, smooth, cool._ She sighed.

There was movement around her, her shoes fell to the floor and she heard Darcy placing something on the bedside table.

"Here's some water and Aspirin", he said softly, wiping strands of hair from her face. "Just sleep, Lizzie, alright?"

"Darcy?" He voice was raw and barely audible. He looked up, staring intently at her with those dark, nearly black eyes.

"Don't go", she whispered, her eyes huge and pleading in the darkness. "Please, Darcy, don't go."

"I'm not far away", he said quietly and pointed at the door. "Just on the couch in the living room."

"Don't go", she whispered again and reached for his hand. "Please, don't go!"

He looked at her, undecided, unsure, he gazed at her hand on his own and let out a tortured sigh.

"Okay", he said softly, sitting down cautiously next to her on the bed, but instead of sliding away, backing off like she usually did, she came closer, crawled on top of him, covering most of his upper body with her own small form and buried her face in the crook, where his neck met his shoulder, her hand gripping the soft cotton fabric of his shirt in a desperate attempt not to let go.

"Don't go", she pleaded again. "Don't go, don't go, _don't go_!"

He sighed, softly and defeated. "I won't."

* * *

**A/N: Feels? ;)  
**

**notes: **

**1\. Lizzie's remark about killjoys stems from My Chemical Romance album "Danger Days", which she forces Darcy to listen to in the car. It's a really great album with a story (it's a concept album) about a group of four rebels, called "Killjoys", who are fighting in a dystopian future against the Better Living Corporation, who are controlling everyone and pushing them into a clean, black and white life. There's also a comic book, which I aquired this weekend (which is why I'm so full of feels:), dealing with the happenings after the album. It's shrill, it's colourful, it's loud and it fits Lizzie's mood in this chapter. The club-concert in this chapter is by a cover band, playing "Danger Days", therefore Lizzie's remark about it being about "being a killjoy", also implying a group affiliation because fans of the band are calling themselves either killjoys, or MCRmy, or both. Whatever. The band is awesome, if there's any one out there, who also loves them, give me a heads up and keep running!**

**2\. Lizzie's tattoo is now the story's profile picture. I did it myself during some thinking time and this what came out of it;)**

**greets, Teddy;)**


	18. Chapter 17 The Morning After

**A/N: Okay, here we go again! Thanks for all the birthday wishes, you're wonderful! I appreciate each and every review even if I don't manage to reply to each of you, You Are Loved! Don't forget that (and forgive me my slight craziness today, sugar does things to you...) **

**SHAMELESS ADVERTISING: I wrote another one-shot in the King-series a few days ago, like I said it's about the drunk dial and takes place before Long Live the King. I poured a lot of my heart into that and I would really appreciate it, if some of you, who haven't read it before go over there and do me the favour. And always: review! Please, pretty please? **

**Also there's a new profile picture for this story, which I drew myself and I know it sounds awful, but I'd really like to know what you think. Please? **

**To Awesome: I did a Twilight story a few months ago, you can find it on my profile, but I don't know if it would classify as a parody...**

**To elf68: ADD is a serious illness, some friends of mine have it. If you have questions, PM me, otherwise : Don't like, don't read. I'm not forcing you. There are lot more stories out there, which are easier to understand. **

**Anyway here's the much desired chapter (see end for more notes):  
**

**Soundtrack: **

**Falling - Florence and the Machine (some lines about falling are from that song, I don't take any credit for that)**

**Impossible - James Arthur **

**White Blank Page - Mumford and Sons  
**

**Running Through my Head - Fru Fru **

**Disclaimer: Not mine, if it was the two of them would be thoroughly compromised after this...**

* * *

**Chapter 17: The Morning After ...  
**

There was this moment, shortly before waking up, this brief, blissful period of ignorance, light as feather, just a few intakes of breath, the two flaps of a fairy's wings before the weight of the world came crashing down again.

This second of peace.

Lizzie blinked. Pale grey bed-linen, an artless, expensive looking King-sized bed made of dark, nearly black wood. They were blinds in front of the vast windows on the opposite side of the room. Not much else, barely anything personal.

It wasn't her room.

She blinked, breathed in. Cotton, citrus, cigarettes. She blinked again, this time to suppress those treacherous tears, the lump in her throat, that threatened to choke her.

She hadn't cried for five years, she wouldn't start now.

Her fingers closed around the soft, grey cotton fabric and the lump in her throat burned even more fervently. She tried not to move, feeling the warmth under her own body, the movement of ribs, muscles, tendons, the circulating of blood with every breath, moving her own ribs, muscles, tendons, bringing her own blood to circulate.

She had no idea where her body ended and his began, the two layers of cotton were no barrier after all and when she felt his breath softly caressing her forehead, she had to contain herself to keep the lump in her throat, the painful whimper under control.

She had to get away from here.

But just as quickly as the thought had entered her mind, it was replaced with another one.

_Just a moment._

The phrase was plea, order and resignation in one. She closed her eyes, blocking out the truth, pressing herself closer to his body and trying to conserve the memory, stuffing it into a compote jar together with the warmth, the scents, the feeling of finally being safe – an exhilarating, intoxicating, numbing feeling as if she'd just been tasered.

_Just a second._

She knew, she could just stay here, could just jump, could just cross that bridge to see what came after it.

But she knew, she wouldn't.

The most terrifying thing about falling was not falling itself, was not even jumping.

She could sit up, bend down, press her lips against his – the thought went like a lightning through her body.

She could do it, but what would it do to them?

Running, jumping, falling.

Colliding was the worst. Shattered bones, chaos, blood on the walls. Humans were no cats after all, they seldom landed on both feet without at least one spiral fracture and they seldom only hurt themselves in the process.

Collateral damage.

How did she phrase it? _We two together in a room are just a catastrophe waiting to happen..._

How fitting.

_A breath..._

Trembling she breathed in, her body revolting against what her head was planning, refusing to move just an inch away from him. To move away, away, away from him.

This was the calm before the storm, was the deadly silence afterwards. It was the end and the beginning and the part in between, just insinuated, faintly sketched. The weight of the world in one breath.

The thousands of tiny threads, tying her to him, which she'd never wanted to spin, which she'd tried to cut off at every opportunity.

They were there.

_Gone._

She disentangled herself from him, ignoring the drag in her protesting muscles, the hammering and droning in her head.

The tearing hole in her chest.

She ran her hand one last time over the soft cotton fabric of his shirt, stretching over his chest. He'd put a hand on his forehead, the other laying loosely to his side.

His eyelids fluttered, his ribcage rising and falling – he looked so much younger when he was asleep.

She knew that she was playing with fire. That every second she lingered in this apartment could turn into a disaster, but she just couldn't, couldn't, _couldn't_ let go.

The light streaming in from the windows, the colour and intensity were just like they'd been that day at the university's parking lot – painting his features harshly against the soft grey of the pillows.

He was beautiful.

Lizzie bent down, the tips of her hair tickling his neck, his chin, dancing over shoulders and arms, a manifestation of the threads, she was in the process of tearing apart.

"I'm sorry", she whispered, even though she knew this was supposed to be a farewell. Perhaps it was. In her own special way. After all, it had been the most used sentence in their conversations, hadn't it?

Perhaps people shouldn't use hollow phrases when they said their goodbyes, no "Farewell", no "See you soon" or "Hopefully, we'll see each other again".

Perhaps it was enough to utter this one sentence, this one word, you associate with that person.

She ran her index finger over his lower lip, over the slight stubble of his three-day-beard until she stopped at the bridge of his nose.

Perhaps it was enough to say the one thing constantly burning on your tongue, as if placing a lid over a card box and scribbling "Closed" on the front as if it was a solved murder case.

"I'm so sorry", she whispered again and stood up.

Carefully she tiptoed trough the rather sparsely decorated apartment, coloured mostly in shades of grey and brown, not really cold but also not really personal, more like a hotel suite. She picked up her shoes and was pondering the question whether or not she should risk the time it would take to put them on or simply walk barefoot, when something startled her.

"Where do you think you're going?" His voice was raw, still scratchy from sleep, but there was an undergoing threat in his words, that sent shivers down her spine.

"Away." She sighed, staring holes into her sneakers.

"And what makes you think that it's okay to just sneak out of the apartment?" He sounded angry and the aggression in his voice made it far easier for Lizzie to swallow down her regret.

"Am I your prisoner now, Darcy?", she asked sarcastically. "Because that would explain, why you kidnapped and took me here."

"Kidnapped?!", he cried out and she could sense the anger radiating from his body. "You were drunk and completely out of your mind, pray tell, what was I supposed to do?"

"Leave me there?", she asked and whirled around only to be promptly caught in a staring duel with him. She jerked back as if someone had hit her.

His hair was tousled, his face wrinkled just like his clothes – god-dammit, why did that guy have to look like an actual human being the moment she wanted him to be a monster?

"Leave you there?", he repeated and pressed his lips tightly together. "In Central London? At three in the morning? In some seedy Club? Strung-out with god-knows-what?"

"Geez, Darcy, lighten up!", Lizzie snorted and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "I was drunk, not completely shitfaced. Really, it's not a big deal."

"I don't care what the fuck you took!", he barked. "You were completely out of it! Did you have any idea how you'd get home once you were done being high somewhere up in the fucking sky?"

She saw the blood rising in his cheeks, how his hands cut through the hair and she couldn't, couldn't, _couldn't_ look him in the eye.

What was there left to say, anyway?

He stopped mid-sentence somewhere along the lines of "unbelievably irresponsible" and it was like someone had let the air out of a balloon, you could practically watch him crumbling down.

"You never intended to, right?" He sounded tired, disappointed. A sigh. "You never intended to come home that night." Darcy ran a hand through his hair, while she was still stubbornly occupied with transforming her feet into Swiss cheese.

"Lizzie..." It sounded pained and she winced at the mention of her nickname. "Fuck", he muttered and turned around, went into the hallway and she opened her mouth to say something, anything to make the pain go away, to make it better somehow, when he whirled around.

"Fuck!", he yelled and slammed his fist with all the pent up frustration and disappointment, the horror about what could have happened, against the bare concrete wall of the hallway.

Something cracked, but Darcy didn't even wince, just stayed there with his fist against the wall, back turned towards her.

He trembled and she was struggling, struggling, struggling, half determined to just leave, to close the door behind her, to leave him hurt badly enough, so that he'd voluntarily put the seven seas between them.

But she couldn't.

"Darcy..." She tiptoed towards him. "Darcy, fuck, I'm sorry." The words were burning on her tongue. She touched his arm and her fingers prickled at the contact.

It took one, two breaths until all of a sudden Lizzie found herself in between two arms, one body and a concrete wall.

She opened her mouth, staring wide-eyed at Darcy, who gazed at her with such desperation in his eyes that she felt the hole in her chest tearing apart at the seams. She tried not to jerk back, despite his proximity, tried not to curl up on the floor with her head in her lap, because the physical contact was seriously driving her insane.

"Lizzie...", he whispered, his voice raw. "God, Lizzie."

She whimpered. Everywhere his skin made contact with hers and even there, where two thin layers of cotton separated bodies from each other, it felt as if she was burning alive.

"Do you do that often?", he asked, his eyes piercing into hers. "Tempting fate come hell or high water?"

"Sometimes", she whispered. "If it becomes too much to bear."

He was breathing hard and she tried not to let it show that all of this, the proximity, the burning, his breath ghosting over her face, was driving her right into madness.

"Fuck, Lizzie!", he yelled again, his face contorted in anger while his fist abused the wall behind her again.

She flinched and her body began trembling like a leaf. His hand slipped from the concrete wall, cupping her face, but she refused to meet his eyes.

"_Don't_", she whispered, stretching out both hands to create distance between them while she escaped to the side. "Give me a minute."

She felt his eyes on her, hot and burning like his hands on her body before, defeated and concerned at the same time. Her hands moved over her arms, wrists, elbows and upper arms, making sure that everything was undamaged, that the burning was just an illusion, the violence just meant for the wall behind her.

She did the same with her ribs, her hip bones and when she found everything whole and intact, she slowly opened her eyes just to see Darcy sitting there on the floor, his head buried in his hands, but still watching her.

"I'm a pacifist, I have a problem with violence", she said quietly. "Even if it's only meant for walls."

"Don't you dare and try to turn this into one of your jokes without punchline", he snarled, his voice raw and angry.

"Without punchline?" She tried to sound offended, but her voice was shaky and it was painfully obvious. "Believe me, the wall thinks differently."

"Lizzie..."  
"No!", she snapped and her voice, raw and hoarse, died at the last syllable while she was fighting back the tears, that threatened to overwhelm her. She backed off slowly. "Don't call me that, okay? You don't get to call me that! We're not friends and we're not sleeping together, so cut the crap!"

He gazed at her and raised an eyebrow. "Then please explain to me, what last night was about."

She rolled her eyes. "Do you really need a repeat performance of the birds and bees talk, Professor? I'm pretty sure you'll find one on Youtube and if not-"

"Stop it!", he barked, cutting her off, while jumping back on his feet. "You pretty much begged me not to go last night, Elizabeth. _Begged me._ So stop acting as if this is..." He struggled for words.

"Nothing?", she asked, her eyes burning. "As if this is nothing? But that's exactly what it is, isn't it, Darcy? It's nothing. You're my professor and I'm your student, we know each other outside of Uni because of mutual acquaintances and that's fucking it!"

"I don't believe a word you just said", he said, his voice hard.

"Yeah, because I forgot to mention that we're also pissing each other off royally." She rolled her eyes in annoyance.

He snorted. "You can be awfully blind if you want to be, can't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?", she asked a bit indignantly and crossed her arms in front her chest.

"It means that you didn't talk for a whole day, walking around the hallways like a fucking Zombie and that I was _so_ close to taking you to the nearest hospital so that they could pump your stomach."

"I didn't take any drugs-" He cut her off again.

"You got drunk off your ass yesterday until I had no other choice but to get you out of there and bring you here."

"I didn't ask you to -"

"You begged me to stay with you and I did", he continued, while the dark eyes burned themselves into her green ones. "And this morning, not five minutes ago you nearly had a panic attack when I...when I...", he faltered and closed his eyes. "And I want so _badly_ to kill whoever did this to you, but for that you'd need to be reflective enough to admit that you actually have a problem, but you're so intent on remaining blind and so _caught up_ in suicidal acts in order to prove to yourself that you're still alive, instead of simply opening your eyes and seeing what's right in front of you."

He shook his head with a bitter smile and backed off. "So, goodbye, Miss Bennet. It was pleasure to meet you."

She stared at him, his retreating back, how he walked down the hallway towards his room, a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

"Darcy", she whispered, choking. He stopped.

"I'm sorry."

* * *

Lizzie was still numb when she finally entered her street. Shoes in hand (because she hadn't been in the right mind to do something so mundane as putting shoes on), she marched up the stairs to her apartment, Darcy's parting words still ringing in her head.

Craig was sitting in the door-frame of his apartment, joint in one hand, ashtray next to him on the floor, waiting for her.

"Are you my welcoming committee? ", she asked him, after they'd stared at each other for a good fifteen minutes. The dark shadows under Craig's eyes unsettled her, but she was way too tired to start an argument with him.

He snorted. "Is he good?", he asked, flipping off the ash of his cigarette.

"Who are you talking about?", she asked, slightly irritated, feeling that she was slowly but surely getting a headache.

"The Professor", Craig prompted. "Is he any good in bed?"

"How the hell should I know that?", she snarled, leaning against the tiled wall of the hallway.

"I don't know, you're the one, who spent the night with him", he replied and took another drag of his joint. The smell of weed reached her nose, making her stomach churn.

"Nothing happened", she said with her eyes shut tightly, while everything around her started spinning.

"Yeah right, tell yourself and your shower that."

"What about my shower?", Lizzie countered, but Craig just rolled his eyes. "You're lucky", he said then.

"And why's that?", she asked, slightly exasperated, she didn't have much patience today for Craig, when he was high as a kite.

"Because you got some action. It's scarce these days." He wriggled his eyebrows and took another, drag.

"I didn't." She sighed. "And there are clubs and all that... if you feel lonely, Craig."

He stood up and stubbed out the joint. "Doesn't matter anyway", he mumbled and she knew that she should have jumped at those words, but she was tired, so _tired_...

"Craig..."

He waved it aside. "Let it go." A grin. "And I'm not only your welcoming committee, but also a heads-up." He nodded towards her apartment door. "Little blonde guy is in there." He shuddered. "...gives me a headache with his endless blathering."

She groaned, considering to just hide in Craig's apartment until weird recruiting guy would make his excuses, but knowing Collins (and she'd gotten to know him quite well during their last hundred phone conversations or so), she knew that it was useless. That guy was a freaking terrier.

Besides, she didn't have the mind to channel her inner Anne so that she could handle a shitfaced Craig today.

But this thought went and jumped out of the window two seconds later, when she opened her apartment door only to promptly find herself face to face with Charlotte and Collins, who was looking at her like she was the best thing since sliced bread.

Someone should give the poor guy an update.

"Miss Bennet!", he cried out immediately. "How absolutely wonderful to be blessed with the unexpected joy of meeting you here, Miss Bennet! Or may I call you Elizabeth? It is really a blessing to finally see -"

He looked at her with big puppy eyes and it would have been kind of cute how he tripped over his own feet, if she hadn't been so excruciatingly tired, so completely irritated by even the slightest hum of a fly.

"Didn't you explain the rules to him?", she asked Charlotte, her brow furrowed. The dark haired girl stood behind Collins, looking wide-eyed from one to the other.

" - Lady Catherine DeBourgh will be delighted if I introduce you to her!", Collins piped up again, while Lizzie was looking at Charlotte expectantly.

"I tried?", the Spanish girl offered and wrung her hands.

"Did you make sure that the words actually made it past his eardrums?", Lizzie grunted, letting her bag drop onto one of the chairs in the kitchen, while Collins continued to dance around her.

"How in hell do you check something like that?", Charlotte replied, watching the show from the door-frame.

"Since reading your résumé, she's obsessed with meeting you, Miss Bennet – Elizabeth. "Bring me that girl, Collins", she said. "I want her to work for me!""

"Doesn't that sound an awful lot like kidnapping?", Lizzie asked Charlotte and started looking for something edible in the tiny fridge. "Human trafficking? Slavery?"

"Lizzie...", Charlotte rebuked her and Lizzie swore, she sounded a bit more like Jane with every passing day.

"What?", she grumbled and dragged her head out of the freezer, a chocolate bar in her mouth.

"Give him a chance, okay?", Charlotte urged her. "He's not so bad once you get to know him."

"And for your training in January everything is ready and also the head of paediatrics is completely delighted at -"

"Not so bad?", Lizzie repeated. "Charlotte, I know that he's your Almost-One-Night-Stand from our Welcome-Back-party, so don't act like that."

"You know?", Charlotte cried out, surprised and horrified at the same time.

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "Oh please, who do you think you're talking to?"

"Wonder Woman apparently", the Spanish girl muttered and cast a glance at Collins, who even found a chewing and munching Lizzie venerable.

"As if I'd ever put on a costume like that", Lizzie snorted, spitting out crumbs of cookies before grabbing a bottle of water. "But just for the record, I don't have to acquaint myself with him on the same level you did, do I?

"He's the absolute best in his field and a good friend of mine if I may say so myself, even if he's a bit unconventional at times in my modest opinion and his cousin will be working with us during your training at Lady Catherine's request."

Charlotte looked at Lizzie questioningly and Lizzie sighed. "I don't have to kiss him, right?", she finally asked, sipping on her water.

" - and you expressed an interest in trauma surgery if I'm not mistaken? Then this will be a wonderful opportunity for you! But that's generally the greatest thing about Rosings Hospital, only the best of the best and always possibilities for self-improvement -", Collins raved.

"God no!", Charlotte cried out, nearly choking on the cookie in her mouth (she'd never been able to resist sweets and Lizzie had placed the whole cookie box on the table). Conveniently, her outburst induced Collins to rest his vocal chords for a few seconds. He blinked from one girl to the other, then down to the cookies before cheerfully continuing his monologue.

"Does he ever stop?", Lizzie groaned and hid behind the bottle from the onslaught of extolments.

"Lizzie, come on, give him a chance. I promise you don't have to kiss him."

"That's reassuring", she scoffed before her face lit up suddenly. "May I explain the rules to him?", she asked excitedly with big, sparkling green eyes.

"You mean the _Lizzie-is-totally-crazy-but-we-let-her-because-we-love-her_-rules?", Charlotte asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No, the _Lizzie-is-awesome-and-we'd-be-totally-stranded-without-her-_rules", Lizzie replied before bouncing up and down like a little girl with a skipping rope. "May I? Oh, please, please, _please_!"

"Did they put something in your cookies?", Charlotte asked dryly, but when Lizzie wouldn't stop bouncing in time to Collins' digressions (he was describing in painstaking details after which places the different wings at Rosings Hospital were named), she relented.

"If need be...", she grumbled, taking place at the kitchen table, where she would have the best place for the upcoming show. "Then let's get started."

Lizzie grinned, placing the bottle on the table before raising her hand to draw Collins' attention to herself (not that it hadn't been there before the whole time) and snapped her fingers a couple of times, during which the little man's eyes followed her hand like a trained puppy.

"Listen, Mr Collins", she snapped and little Rumpelstiltskin's mouth fell open in surprise.

"Number 1", she clapped her hands. "I will never, under any circumstances, sign a work contract with Rosings Hospital and if you continue to pester me with stuff like that, I will get a restraining order, capitó?"

Collins opened his mouth to voice his protest, but Lizzie simply pressed her thumb and index-finger tightly together, showing with a hissed "Zut Zut" that his input wasn't desired at the moment.

"I'm really grateful for the offer and I look forward to doing my training at your hospital -" Collins eyes lit up like two stars on a Christmas tree. "But I can only repeat myself like I did the whole week, Mr Collins: I'm not interested in pursuing any kind of career in any kind of hospital within Europe. As soon as I have my degree, I'm out of here and back to Africa, are we clear?"

"But-", Rumpelstiltskin began, but one admonishing glare from Lizzie shut him up again, while Charlotte in the background was shaking with laughter.

"And if you stopped talking for at least two seconds, which is a general necessity to guarantee communication, then you'd know that I'm the absolute last person you want to have as a doctor in your pretty clinic. One year there and you shouldn't be surprised if one night I paint the whole hospital in pitchfork red and I can tell you, I won't use actual _paint_ for that."

Collins face paled at that and Lizzie knew she had him.

"So come on, Collins. Open you eyes, the perfect candidate is sitting right in front of you."

"Huh?", Collins said and turned around. His entire face lit up like the one of a child on Christmas morning. "Miss Lucas", he whispered, nearly reverently and Charlotte with a cookie sticking out of her mouth, simply stared at him like a deer caught in the headlights, when Lizzie too, turned around to look at her, repeating Collins words with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

"Miss Lucas."

"Oh, how absolutely wonderful!", Collins cried out, lifting his hands in the air with glee, when Lizzie raised her hand again and snapped her fingers. Collins fell silent immediately, dropping his arms like a scolded school-boy.  
Charlotte in the meantime had completely forgotten the cookie in her mouth.

"Collins, about this name-thing..." Rumpelstiltskin nodded eagerly. "Do you want to sleep with me?"

Both, Charlotte and Collins started coughing and choking at the same time and the little man tuned fifty different shades of red, while Lizzie, not even slightly embarrassed at the question, simply watched the spectacle with amusement evident in her sparkling green eyes.

When they both recuperated from their coughing fit, Lizzie snapped her fingers again.

"So, I gather, you don't want to", she concluded and when Collins started explaining, she put him off like usual. "_Great_, that means if you want to call me by my first name, we need to become friends, understood?"

Collins nodded.

"So, Point 1 on the _How-do-I-become-Lizzie's-Friend_-List: Shut up every two minutes for at least thirty seconds, so that people can also throw in their two cents. It's called communication, got it?" He seemed to think hard about that, but then he nodded his assent and Lizzie smiled.

"Point 2: Do you have a first name?"

Collins nodded again. "It's Willliam", he said, "but I prefer Bill."

"Me too", Lizzie muttered under her breath, which got her side-glance from Charlotte, who was otherwise still occupied with staring at Collins like he was the god-damn angel of salvation.

"However, Bill. The name "Elizabeth" is off-limits, understood? It's taboo. T. A. B. O. O. Exclamation mark. Call me Lizzie or Liz or some other shortage of my name. I can tolerate Beth, but I draw the line at Eliza, since that seems to be Carol's new favourite word." She snorted. "The poor child can't pronounce anything over two syllables. Comes from the coke she's snorting, you see? That stuff really messes with your head, I tell you. Makes you delusional, see things that aren't there, makes you believe that you're engaged or some other shit like that and then comes the fun part, where she shows up at church on Sunday in a white wedding dress, which is indecent at best, thinking she's on the way to her own god-damn wedding, but without the poor groom's knowledge, bursting in through the church doors right in the middle of a "Halleluja" , demanding to be wedded right away..." Lizzie gazed at the ceiling with a dreamy expression on her face. "Oh, fun times!", she sighed, before she noticed Charlotte and Collins looking at her weirdly. "Where was I...", she snapped her fingers again. "Oh, yeah, you can call me Lizzie.."

"Your wish is my command, Miss -...Lizzie", Collins said smiling and she swore she saw him bowing.

"Third, space, Bill, understood? I need _space_." She stretched out her arms, forcing Collins to make a few steps back. "This is my personal sphere and this is yours and it's only crossed in very emotional moments when we're both comfortable in our friendship, alright?"

Collins nodded, his brow furrowed as if he was trying very hard to process all the new information.

"Additionally, no dancing without music, unless I'm drunk, because then I can take it and we're limiting quoting the great Lady to three times a day, agreed?"

He didn't look too happy about that, but he nodded nonetheless.

"Wonderful!", Lizzie cried out and grabbed her bottle of water. "And you two", she pointed with the plastic bottle to Collins and Charlotte, who was still occupied playing Bambi on the race track, "discuss your potential working agreement. I'm outta here!", she declared, taking her bag and making her way to her sanctuary, when Collins jumped up in front of her again.

"My words don't do my feelings justice, Lizzie! I'm so extraordinarily excited to be your friend and I can't tell you how incredibly happy - "

"Collins", Lizzie grunted, her head going up and down, up and down with Collins' movements. "_Space_."

"Oh, but of course!", he immediately cried out with slight chagrin and jumped to the side. "But we're still friends, Miss Lizzie, right?"

Miss Lizzie? She shuddered. "I'll think about it", she grumbled and shut the door to her room with a loud bang, before leaning against the door-frame with a sigh.

"Tea?", a voice asked and Lizzie nearly jumped out of her skin. There in the middle of her room, where until recently an old tattered Persian carpet had been laying on the floor, now stood a small coffee table with two wicker chairs and a tea set on a lace doily and Anne Elliot sat neatly, with her legs crossed on one of the chairs, smilingly raising one of the tea cups in the air.

"Rose or Ginger?", she asked nonchalantly and Lizzie was distracted for a moment by the simple fact that the wicker chairs had cushions with a rose print on it.

"Where the hell did you get that table from?", Lizzie asked when she finally got her voice back.

"What table?", Anne asked innocently, her amber eyes wide open.

"That table." Lizzie pointed to said piece of furniture. "How did you get it up here?"

"Who said that I got it up here?", the ambergirl replied. "Perhaps it was here already."

"I never had a table in this room before, Mary Poppins.." Lizzie let her bag drop to the floor. "And I don't like wicker chairs with floral cushions all that much. They prickle."

"What wicker chairs?", Anne asked. "I only see a bunch of leather armchairs around here."

Lizzie turned around halfway, arching, half disbelievingly, half annoyed, an eyebrow.

"Did you watch those films again?", she asked and groaned. "Oh Annie, you know "Harry Potter" is no good for your mental and emotional equilibrium."

"Only the final part", Anne defended herself a bit indignantly and pursed her lips. "And I don't know what you're complaining about. That's just a tea set."

"Yeah together with half of the furniture of an English Tea Salon. In. My. _Room_."

"What's your problem with tea all of a sudden?", Anne asked, pouting a bit. "And I thought you love "Harry Potter"?"

"I do, we're soul mates. But after every film marathon you think you're Dumbledore and I'm sorry to break the news to you, Miss Elliot, but you're not some old crock beyond the age of retirement with a big, white, bushy beard and a preference for hand-knitted socks, understood?"

"Do you use the same tone, you used for Collins not five seconds ago for me now, too?" Anne shook her head half amusedly, half disapprovingly. "It won't work either way, sweetie and just for your information, I don't _think_ I'm Dumbledore, I _am_ Dumbledore. There's a difference."

"Really?"

"Yeah, didn't it become clear after the socks?" Anne poured another cup of tea and motioned Lizzie to take a seat in the chair opposite to her, which the girl did, albeit reluctantly.

"No the beard thing threw me off", Lizzie replied and accepted her cup. There was the rose pattern again, this time on the porcelain. "Even though the age could be true."

"Thanks for the compliment", Anne muttered with more sarcasm than usually, but this had become a normal occurrence since Wentworth was back in her life and so Lizzie only gazed at the ambergirl, furrowing her brow when she wouldn't look up.

"So what are you doing here, Mary Poppins?", Lizzie finally asked, pressing her knees against her chest, the cup with the rose blossom tea still in hand, eyeing the scones, which were practically waiting for her, prepared with butter and jam on a little tray next to the teapot. "And why aren't we having this nice little teatime on the ceiling?"

"Do I need a reason for visiting my best friend?", Anne asked and smiled. Lizzie raised an eyebrow. "Fine", she relented. "I just wanted to know how your night with the Professor went."

"Oh my fucking goodness, how do you all know about that?", Lizzie cried out and nearly jumped out of the chair. "Did some idiot put that on Facebook?"

"Pfft", Anne snorted disgusted and snatched one of the little buns from the tray. "As if I need that _web page_", she pronounced it like curse word, "to know about the important stuff." She shook her head. "No, no, little child, I like to rely on my intuition. It's a good thing, you should try it sometimes. Works a hundred times better than realism and cynicism combined."

"And how does Craig know about me and - ?"

"You should really give him more credit, Lizzie", Anne chided her and something from the ambergirl pre-Wentworth and pre-Harry-Potter-marathon came through. "That guy has more antennas than you're aware of."

"Literally or figuratively?", Lizzie asked dryly and took a sip from her tea.

Anne smirked. "It's also possible that I called him."

"Anne!"

"Lizzie?"

"Anne!"

"May I scream your name, too?", Anne asked and both girls burst out laughing from the sheer ridiculousness of it all and the double meaning of the question.

"So, how did it go with Darcy?", the ambergirl asked when they finally calmed down enough to form words without coughing out their bowels.

"We didn't sleep with each other", Lizzie mumbled, but instead of doubting the honesty of such a statement like Craig did, Anne's smile grew even wider.

"You like him", she declared smugly. "You liiiike him!"

" I do not", Lizzie mumbled, but the resistance was weak at best. "Why do you think that?"

"You didn't sleep with him", Anne replied, causing Lizzie to raise her head in irritation.

"Isn't that the definition of liking somebody? To sleep with him?", she asked, playing with the material of the wicker chair.

"Not in your case, sweetie. You're only sleeping with people, you definitely don't like, because otherwise you'd make yourself emotionally vulnerable", the ambergirl explained as if reciting the answers to the Time's Sunday crossword puzzle.

"When did you come up with that analysis?", Lizzie grunted, feeling uncomfortably naked under her gaze.

"Ten minutes ago, when you asked Collins if he wanted to sleep with you."

"That was rhetoric question!", Lizzie rose up.

"Of course it was", Anne reassured her in that certain tone of voice, indicating that she didn't believe a thing coming from her friend's pretty mouth. "But point being, you spent the night with Darcy without sleeping with him, which is a small miracle, when Charlotte's right and there are always fireworks burning and whizzing when you two are together in a room."

"We two are just a catastrophe waiting to happen", Lizzie mumbled, reluctant to look Anne in the eye, because she knew she would loose whatever battle they were fighting when she did so.

"You're sexual tension right from the book", Anne observed.

"Look who's talking!", Lizzie cried out, happy to have found a way out of her misery. "I only spent one evening with the two of you at one table and I was _so_ close to ripping out every single hair from my skull in frustration!"

"I don't know what you're talking about", Anne said, her voice strained and the cup in her hands was trembling.

"As if." Lizzie rolled her eyes. "I see the way you look at each other when you think no one's watching. You're not really discreet, you know that, right?"

The words drifted apart in the room, corroding in between the strong scent of tea, roses and self-made scones and Lizzie blinked a few times until she noticed that Anne hadn't answered her question. She leaned forward to shake the silent girl out of her melancholy when she finally opened her eyes again. "She doesn't look at me that way anymore", she whispered, her gaze lost somewhere in her ginger tea.

"Why do you think that?", Lizzie asked, this time without unnecessary sarcasm.

"Because she's with Lou and Hetty now."

"Lou and Hetty?!", Lizzie cried out not only shocking Anne with the volume of her outcry, but also herself. "Anne, I'm pretty sure they play for the other team."

The ambergirl shook her head. "They think they should try it out. That boys are stupid and all that stuff. And they... worship Wentworth." Her voice faltered at the name of her ex-girlfriend and she took a sip of her tea.

"But what about Hayter?", Lizzie asked and started nibbling at one of the scones. "I thought Hetty was over the moon about that guy?"

"She was", Anne explained with a sigh. "But then Lou put the bug in her ear that you should explore all your sexual proclivities before jumping into a monogamous relationship so she put him on hold for a while. The poor guy is completely devastated."

Lizzie looked at her with her mouth agape. "Oh my fucking goodness, I didn't know there was so much drama over there!"

Anne shrugged. "However", she said quietly. "It doesn't change anything."  
Lizzie shook her head. "Anne, stop feeling guilty all the time. Everything that happened... it's not your fault alone. You were seventeen for fuck's sake! People seldom make their best decisions at seventeen. Prefrontal Cortex, did you forget?"

Anne laughed quietly and humourlessly. "I should have been braver", she said softly. "Many people are a lot braver than I was at seventeen. Dammit, even Wentworth was braver than I, making it public, despite all the Homophobia in town, but I … I was too much of a coward to tell my lunatic of a mother that I'm in love with a fucking girl!"

Lizzie gazed at Anne with big eyes, suppressing the impulse to just reach over that table and hug her, because she knew that was the last thing Anne wanted at the moment.

She looked like she was about to cry.

"You're not seventeen anymore", she said softly after a while. "That's the only good thing about time... you won't be seventeen forever. You'll grow up, make mistakes, get better and when Wentworth finally opens her eyes and understands that sometimes we're all just god-damn products of our environment, then -", she faltered, when the memory of the past morning came back to her. _Instead of simply opening your eyes..._  
"Lizzie?", she heard Anne's tentative, a bit scratchy voice and when she blinked and saw the ambergirl's concerned face clearly in front of her, it dawned on her that she must have been out of it for a bit.

"Sorry", she croaked and her voice sounded so frighteningly strange to her. "It's just... Darcy said something similar this morning... something about me being so intent on remaining blind..."

"You are", Anne said quietly, laughing softly when Lizzie looked at her in disbelief. "God, Lizzie, you're so god-damn blind when it comes to yourself. You can analyse me and Charlotte and Craig and even Collins, but when comes to your own behaviour, when it's about Darcy, you're so unbelievably oblivious that it's bordering on ridiculous."

Lizzie stared on the floral cushion of her wicker chair, forcing herself not to cry. "You're not seventeen anymore, Lizzie", Anne said softly and leaned forward. "You're not seventeen and you like him."

"I do", Lizzie choked. "I'm mature enough to admit that, but it's not fair and – I can't do that... _I just can't..._"

Anne looked at her and together they just sat there in silence. The in and out of breaths, the scent of tea and the soft breeze coming in from the open window surrounding them like a warm blanket.

Home, Lizzie though. _Safe_.

And then after a little, teeny tiny while, the two flaps of a fairy's wings, Lizzie raised her head.

"How did you get all that stuff up here?", she asked, pointing with her chin towards the small, but massive wooden table and the wicker chairs with the floral cushions.

"_Wingardium Leviosa_", Anne replied dryly and both girls burst out laughing.

And exactly at that moment, right in the middle of all that lightness and laughing, somebody knocked on the door and Collins stuck his head in like a little school-boy looking for the right class.

"Are we friends again, Lizzie?", he asked with his happy puppy-smile, gazing from Anne to Lizzie, who was still laughing, her head buried in her hands.

"_Space_, Collins!"

It would become the most used sentence in their conversations.

* * *

**A/N: So what do you think? Bit of an epiphany for dear Lizzie, don't you think?  
**

**Notes: I like Collins as being this nerdy, friendly, clumsy guy with the glasses for this story, mainly because we need comic relief and also because there are so many bad boys in this story... puh! And also because I didn't want Charlotte to end up with some douchebag after all, I still love her:)**

**So next time is the last chapter for this arch, we're wrapping it up a bit and put icing on top, but yeah... shit's about to go down. So review! **

**Greetings, Teddy **


	19. Chapter 18 Au Revoir, Paris!

**A/N: Okay, dear readers, since I was threatened to receive a Lizzie Bennet death-stare (yes, I'm talking about you, violetscript;) if I don't update soon, here it is, the final chapter of the first volume. **

**And I don't blackmailing! But it works... sometimes. Alas, I thank you all for your reviews, as always, you make my day;) **

**Anyway, we're doing things a bit different this time...Lizzie's acting a bit strange (not that it's suprising), sentences in cursive are quotes and the numbers correspond with those in the list of sources below, to avoid confusions:)**

**Soundtrack: **

**Consequence of Sounds - Regina Spektor**

**Youth - Daughter**

**Ways and Means - Snow Patrol**

**Disclaimer : I don't think Austen knew anything about Punk bands, E.E. Cummings and Stephen King. But I do. She just owns some plot lines;) **

* * *

**Chapter 18: Au revoir, Paris!  
**

_December..._

„And another round!", Lou Groveland cried out, placing the tray with the shot glasses in the middle of the table, only to jump up and down in time to the Jingle-Bells song, blaring from the radio, her red curls bouncing, while she called for "Shots! Shots! Shots!" like a crazy maniac, when everybody assembled reached for their respective glasses and positioned them front of them.

"Sit down", Craig grumbled and when Lou, who already had a considerable amount of "Shots! Shots! Shots!" running through her veins, wouldn't stop acting like an oversized rubber ball, he unceremoniously pulled her down on the next best chair, which was, to top it all, covered in fairy lights.

Well, Marley always had had a strange sense of humour, especially when it came to Christmas decorations. But Lizzie thought the little angels in between those fir branches were kinda cute if it weren't for those Christmas bulbs in the form of oversized gherkins right next to them.

"Here", Craig held up her hand. "Lick."

She screwed up her face in a disgusted frown. "Why on earth should I do that?"

"Because it's Tequila, we're talking about?" Craig pointed to the glasses in front of them. "Lick, swallow, bite, capitó?"

"Pardon me?", Lou asked and Hetty, who wore a red Santa hat on her own golden head, looked confused, too. "What's that supposed to be?"

"Definitely not the guide to a well-done blow-job", Charlotte barked at Craig's rather unnerved expression, elbowing Lizzie in the side.

Lizzie cringed, plastered something akin to a smile on her lips and said nothing. She knew that Charlotte was _trying, testing, making an effort _to ease their crumbling relationship, but something was different and both girls knew that.

Lizzie Bennet was disappointed.

Craig gaped at the Groveland-Twins and their blank expressions. "You've had Tequila before, right?"

"But of course!"

"At a party -"

"- right out of the bottle!", both girls revolted, taking turns to voice their outrage, while Craig just shook his head in amazement.

"Uh, virgins!", Wentworth, who was sitting right between Hetty and Anne, cried out, swirling around the liquid in her glass. "How... _cute_."

The twin's mouths popped open in silent rage, but it was Anne who paled considerably under Wentworth's hard gaze.

With a loud bang Lizzie's bare palm connected with the table's smudgy surface with the absolute velocity of a riffle bullet, forcing the raven princess to turn her dark eyes on her.

The threat in the green ones was unmistakeable.

"Limes?", Anne tentatively asked everybody around, raising the bowl with the fruit slices. She was still pale and her voice shaky, while Wentworth was grumbling and looking everywhere but at her.

"What are you supposed to do with them?", Hetty asked, eyeing the sour fruit with caution.

"Put it in your mouth", Craig explained curtly. "First, you lick the salt off your palm, then you drink your shot and the you bite into the lime, understood?"

"I can count to three, Craig!", Lou cried out indignantly, taking the salt shaker from him.

"Just wanted to be sure", he replied, just as vitriolic. "So. _Lick_!"

"From which porn film did you stole that command?", Charlotte threw in with a smug smile, which neither Lizzie nor Collins on her other side, who was tugging uncomfortably on his collar, reciprocated.

"One from your collection", Craig snapped, which shut Charlotte up for good and nearly burst Collins dangerously red head. The Groveland-twins in the meantime gazed at the salt shaker with an expression of deliberately adult determination, a mask, which Charlotte's teasing remarks had cracked a little.

Craig raised Lou's hand again. "Either you lick it and put the salt on it, or I'll do it for you."

"Iiih", both Lou and Hetty cried out, grimacing, before licking their palms and putting salt on them.

"Finally", he grunted and there was a gasp of relief from everybody around the table (even Collins had salt on his hands, though he and Charlotte wanted to make some strange couple thing out of it and lick the salt from their significant other's fingers – when Lizzie suggested they should do real body-shots if they couldn't live without the other's tongue on their skin for any amount of time and put the salt on Charlotte's neck and the shot between her boobs, Collins' face turned a myriad shades of red and Charlotte babbled something about her catholic education – which had been, of course, long before the blow-job and porn comments).

"And what do we do now?", Lou asked, barely disguising her excitement and Wentworth smiled at the both of them, when Hetty, too, started bouncing on her seat.

Bunnies. Fucking bunnies on LSD.

Lizzie felt Anne freezing next to her and sighed internally.

The past few weeks had been all kinds of strange and from time to time she'd asked Anne, Charlotte or one or two innocent pedestrians to please give her a pinch, because she felt like she'd stepped into this strangely twisted mirror world, into an Opposite Day, where they were more exceptions than rules and reality sometimes seemed so fucking normal until a chasm yawned, in which you unexpectedly, unintentionally, _unpreparedly_ stepped into.

Much like she'd stepped into Charlotte's and Collins' heavy make-out session on the kitchen-table two weeks ago (the fascination this girl had with that piece of furniture was something Lizzie would never understand). Afterwards she'd wanted to pour bleach into her brain and eyes to erase the picture of the two of them going at it.

Disturbing wasn't even close to her level of emotional turmoil.

After she'd made it clear a few weeks ago (the memory still made her smile) that she'd never, under any circumstances stick her head so far up anybody's ass and voluntarily sell Catherine DeBourgh her soul or whatever was left of it, Collins had concentrated more and more on Charlotte and the Spanish girl had welcomed his advances with open arms.

Which was one of the reasons, Lizzie couldn't stand to be in the same room as Charlotte these days, not to mention sitting next to her, but today was the twins' birthday and they'd met up at _Philip's_ to celebrate properly, even though it was a Monday and they all had to be at university or work early the next morning. After all the hyperactive bunnies had finally reached the legal drinking age at eighteen.

"Lick, swallow, bite", Craig grunted, handing the limes to the twins. "It's not rocket science, princess."

"'Cause then you wouldn't understand it", Lou bit back, snipping her fingers with her free hand so that the entire group would chant "One, two, three, shot!" like the times before, lick their hands (or their partner's in Charlotte's and Collins' case), chuck down the alcohol and bite into the lime slices, only to screw up their faces when the sour liquid would overwhelm their senses.

They were here to celebrate.

Or to just get drunk off their asses.

"Shots! Shots! Shots!", squealed Lou again, while the others were still recuperating. Lizzie wanted to say something, something about how Lou reminded her of Fritzchen, the Groveland's old, but still hyperactive poodle, but the reply got stuck in her throat, when the Tequila burning and pulsating ran down her throat into her stomach, leaving her deaf and mute.

She still wasn't back. Not really, not completely. Not like all those other years, where she'd jumped back into her old form like a rubber band. No, this time it was different.

As if she was trying to cover herself with a way too small blanket, something _would not, could not, should not _fit and she watched life happening around her, humans and their squabblings, through a god-damn shatter-proof glass, there and not there, while her emotions were laying battered around her like her insides were a fucking teenie-room in dire need of a good spring cleaning.

But it was autumn. It was autumn.

"_I think I too have known autumn too long _(1)", Lizzie said quietly, whispering it into her empty shot glass and Charlotte let out a groan, burying her face in Collins' shoulder, who was watching Lizzie with his usual fascination, while Anne simply arched an eyebrow, blinking in amusement.

"_And what have you to say_ (1)?" , the ambergirl asked. "_What is sometimes called a tongue of flame or an arm extended burning is only the long red and orange branch of a green maple_ (2)."

Lizzie gazed at her, tilting her head. "_A wind_ (1)", she said. "_A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand _(1)." She blinked. "They stand, Anne."

"_The trees, suddenly wait against the moon's face _(1)", Anne said and nodded. "But what about it?"

"_So duneyed master enter the sweet gates of my heart and take the rose, which perfect is with killing hands _(3)", Lizzie muttered, kicking her glass to the side.

"Sweet gates?", Lou repeated, gazing questioningly at her sister and Craig, who looked equally perplexed. "Sweet _gates_?"

"I think Lizzie had a bit too much", Charlotte said with vitriol, she was still a bit, a teeny tiny bit pissed at her flatmate after the tongue lashing, Lizzie had given her last week.

"You and Collins... care to explain?", she'd asked her a few days after the kitchen-table-episode, shortly after Collins had finally left the apartment for the day, turning the TV on mute.

"What are you talking about?", Charlotte had asked, tracing her swollen lips with her fingertips.

"I want to know what this is with you and Collins", Lizzie had asked again, dangerously calm and turned around on the couch so that the harsh white-blue light of the television had cut hard edges into her face.

"It's nothing", Charlotte had said dismissively. "He's... just helping me." She'd turned around, walking back into the kitchen, back to the crime scene.

"He's helping you?", had been Lizzie's sharp reply. "Are you fucking kidding me?!"

"What, Lizzie?", Charlotte had hissed, whirling around. "Not to your liking?"

"You're using him!", Lizzie had thundered and when she'd seen the twitch around Charlotte's mouth, this admission of guilt, it had been like somebody had dropped a load of bricks right over her head.

"So what?", Charlotte had asked, shrugging. "What's it to you, estupidó? You don't even like him."

That wasn't true. Since Collins had stopped his idiotic attempts at recruiting her and become a somewhat constant fixture in their little flat (Craig said, he could tolerate him in small doses, which was practically a declaration of love in his case), Lizzie had found out that she actually liked the little man with the half-bald head and the dance movements of a heavy-footed ballerina on ecstasy.

If he shut up for two minutes or so.

"I like him, okay?", Lizzie had snarled. "He's nice when he's taking his meds and I'm not going to watch you using him, Char. He doesn't deserve being treated like that."

"Oh don't trouble your pretty, little head with it, Liz, it's just about some recommendations for Rosings", Charlotte had waved it aside and Lizzie had tried to remember, to recall that this girl, this _stranger_, was actually one of her best friends in the whole wide and lonely world.

But it had been hard with that calculating, cool look in her friend's eyes, causing her to shiver.

"It's not about some recommendations, Charlotte." Lizzie had stood up at that, the flickering, sharp light of the TV in her back. "Don't act as if you could fool me. You already signed your working contract with the devil incarnate two weeks ago, but you're still using him!"

"Why do you care?" Charlotte had been awfully close to yelling, her voice louder, sharper, a whole lot more hysteric and Lizzie had had the sinking that she didn't know this girl at all.

"Why?!" Lizzie had yanked both her arms into the air, black, tattered lines in front of the flickering background of a Simpsons-episode. "You're asking me why I care, when you're latching onto this guy like he's the reincarnation of your dead brother?"

Charlotte's face had paled considerably at that before two blotchy, red spots had appeared on her cheeks and her gaze had become positively murderous.

"_Don't you dare_", she'd hissed. "Don't you dare drag James into that only because you're jealous that Collins isn't licking your shoes anymore!"

"Jealous?", Lizzie had cried out, nearly bursting out in laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. "Goodness, Charlotte, I don't plan on stealing your precious teddy-bear anytime soon, god-dammit! I never asked him to declare me some fucked up kind of sanctuary, but I can't bloody well stand watching you use him for your own purposes, just because he has the same expression of blind admiration in his eyes like your brother did!""

"Leave. James. _Out of it_", Charlotte had snarled, her hands curled into fists.

"But why should I do that, Charlotte?", Lizzie had asked, while Homer Simpsons behind her had been in the process of guzzling his way through some buffet at Mr Burns'. "When it was you after all, who turned him into a socially acceptable topic by replacing him with _William Collins_?"

"Get out of my head!", Charlotte had screamed enraged and behind all that fury, the hissed words and all the airs, reminding her so much of a stranger, Lizzie had seen the little, twelve-year old girl, the world had forgotten and which an idiotic, selfish brother had left behind with even more idiotic, even more selfish parents.

"Is it so hard to hear the truth?", she'd asked. "I thought you liked him, Charlotte, I really thought you liked him, especially after that incident at our Welcome-Back-Party, but I see it in your eyes every fucking time. That you wish it was James, that his ability to worship from head down to every wrinkly toe reminds you of him and that you only feel whole and complete when somebody's kissing the ground you're walking on, because you're so hungry for attention that you're like a black hole and it will never be enough, Charlotte. _Never_!"

And Charlotte? Charlotte had been trembling, pale with shock and repressed anger and it had taken a long, a fucking long time until she'd been able to speak again without biting off her tongue in the process.

"We can't all be like you, Lizzie", she said so eerily calm that all the air from Lizzie's lungs had escaped with one breath and while Bart Simpson had been busy presenting his behind to the entire world population, she'd been struggling for words.

"Nobody's forcing you to be like me", she'd finally said, not understanding what the devil Charlotte's problem was.

"You don't understand." Charlotte had laughed bitterly. "You were _never_ invisible, Lizzie. Never just average, never not admired from at least three guys at the same time, you were never _not_ the best, the most beautiful or the most interesting girl, _Lizzie_. You've never lost not only the most important person in the whole fucking world, but also your whole life, _yourself_ in one _day_ with one fucking phone call. So don't you dare judge me. _Don't you dare_!"

For a while Lizzie had just stared into Charlotte's glassy, black eyes, barely illuminated by the flickering television screen and it had felt like a good-bye.

"You've got no idea", she'd finally said. "You've got no idea what -"

"I don't know what it's like?", Charlotte had snorted derisively. "Oh, come on, go and fuck your god-damn Professor, you -"

"You. Have. No. _Idea_", Lizzie had snarled, trembling with rage at seeing Charlotte making a judgement about what living her life was like, about what she could understand and what not. As if she was the villain, as if it was her fault that Charlotte's idiotic drug-dealer of a brother had made her addicted to any kind of attention. "You've got no idea what I've been through... and Charlotte..." She'd raised her chin defiantly. "I've always seen you. _Always_."

But Charlotte had just let out a snort and grabbed her overnight-bag.

She'd spent the night at Collins' apartment, like most evenings since then. And if she wasn't busy directing sarcastic little remarks in Lizzie's general direction or trying to rebuild their crippled relationship with deliberately friendly insider-jokes, which made Lizzie want to puke in disgust, she was draped all over every available body part of Collins as if she'd drift off into nothingness when there was no anchor to hold her.

"So... to understand this better...", Lou Groveland cut in, ripping Lizzie right out of her memories. "Sweet gates? You're talking about sweet gates of your heart? I thought you were relationship-killer number one?"

"I thought so, too!", Hetty cooed, while Craig stood up to get them another round of beverages.

"Not since knowing Darcy", he deadpanned, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively, while he reached for the tray to collect their glasses – Lizzie was sad to see hers go, but she was suffering from separation anxiety anyway.

"Oh!", the twins cried out, mouths agape, eyes alight. "Do tell, Lizzie!"

"Yeah, tell us, Lizzie", Charlotte prompted her, too, with a sugary sweet smile, while Collins only started spitting and spluttering at the mention of Darcy's name, all the while asking if it was the same William Darcy, who -

Nobody listened to him.

"_My gun fires seven different shades of shit_", Lizzie replied, raising her chin provocatively in Craig's direction. "_So what's your favourite colour, punk _(4)?"

"Uh, song lyrics! Really, Lizzie? You were a lot more terrifying when you were quoting dead poets", he replied with a smirk and a shrug of his shoulders.

"What were they talking about anyway?", Hetty asked the group. Lou just shrugged, while Anne was busy trying to force Lizzie with silent glares to look the fuck at her.

"Autumn", Wentworth then said with a strange expression on her face. "They were talking about autumn."

Anne's head shot up and her eyes flickered to Wentworth and then they were both staring at each other.

"Oh, then_ wake me up when September ends_ (5)", Craig grunted and made his way over to Marley, who was standing behind the bar, directing her customers while cheesy Christmas songs were blaring through the radio.

"_We're all choir boys at best_ (6)", Lizzie replied, causing more than one confused head shake from the rest of the table. Anne was laughing and Wentworth frowned.

"I think what Miss Lizzie would like to tell us -", Collins began, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

"Miss Lizzie?", Lou interrupted him, looking at him with big eyes. The twins had only experienced Collins in the flesh one or two times before and it was, to put it mildly, a culture shock for them. "From which century did you escape?"

"I was born 1978", Collins replied, attempting to bow, causing Charlotte to fall forward, too, with her being wound around him like an octopus with sucker cups and the Spanish girl looked more than a bit disgruntled when that knot of limbs and bones finally came undone. "But just like my father said, my heart belongs to the Regency-era and I can very well imagine myself as a clergymen with a cosy little parsonage in some nice community and of course with a very generous patron -"

"Is the guy for a real?", Wentworth asked and that was the first time in ten years or so that the raven princess directly asked Anne a question that the ambergirl, when she was finally able to open her mouth, only squeaked out a high-pitched "Yes" and nothing more valuable.

It wasn't really helping that Lou, having heard Wentworth's question, gingerly poked him in the side just to see if Rumplestiltskin wouldn't suddenly disappear into thin air.

Which he didn't, because instead of travelling back into his time zone like every respectable time-traveller (even strange clergymen with even stranger parsonages somewhere in Kent), Bill Collins simply squealed like a pig brought to the slaughter, when Lou shoved her red-painted, extremely sharp nail right between his ribs.

"Oh my Cutie Pootie!", Charlotte cooed at once, showering the rather bewildered looking Collins with caresses and ridiculous pet names.

"_See yonder cranes in a wide arc_ (7)!", Anne said in a sing-song-voice. "_Fully fallen for another_ (7)."

"_You ask how long they've been together _(7)?", Lizzie chimed in with a grin.

"_Since recently _(7)", Anne answered, her eyes fully concentrated on the couple in front of them.

"_And when they shall part_ (7)?", Lizzie asked, tilting her head to the side as if the answer to that question would really interest her.

Anne sighed. "_Soon_ (7)", she said, tracing the lines in the table with her fingertips.

Lizzie snorted. "_We should have known from the start that this wouldn't last_ (8)", she muttered, watching the double C next to her with a mixture of involuntary fascination, similar to the one you experience when watching a really nasty car accident, and incredulous revulsion. "_We found out that we're only layers of skin hiding bones. The past is a flower. The future, the snow_ (8)."

"And still... _Thus seems love a support for lovers _(7)", Wentworth suddenly cut in with her usual smooth, dark expression on her face, which only changed when she locked eyes with the ambergirl. "Or perhaps not", she said, turning around to face Lou and Hetty, while Anne was gasping for air as if Wentworth had stolen that, too.

"_The venom clamours of a jealous woman poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth_ (9)", Lizzie quoted Shakespeare and Wentworth's angry glare spoke volumes.

Lizzie grinned, the alcohol loosening her up, this warm tingling in the pit of her stomach making her forget the weird, uncomfortable feeling that something wasn't right since that Sunday, that morning in Darcy's apartment.

"You -", the raven princess hissed. Lizzie simply raised an eyebrow in silent provocation, but it was Anne's quiet, cautious voice that cut off the air from Wentworth's lungs.

"_In jealousy there is more of self-love than love _(10)", she whispered and the expression in her eyes was close to being …combative.

Wentworth swallowed, blinked, before gritting her teeth and turning back to Lou and Hetty.

"_O crazy daddy of death dance cruelly for us_ (1)", the ambergirl muttered, her hands trembling.

"_Cause dying is perfectly natural; perfectly putting it mildly lively _(11)", Lizzie replied. "_Dying's miraculous _(11)."

Anne sighed. "Did they take away your anti-depressants, sweetheart?", she asked. "You sound like great-aunt Allie after she thought, she'd seen the Grimm."

"The what?", Hetty asked, mouth and eyes so wide open as if the consumed alcohol in her veins had worn out the hinges.

"Please", Wentworth added without looking up.

"What?" She sounded even more intelligent. God-dammit, didn't these kids have an IQ from over 150?

"_Please_." Wentworth was, judging from her blank expression, playing poker without cards.

"Now I'm confused", Hetty whined, pouting. Anne sighed.

"You should say "Please", child. Where are your manners?", she asked, shaking her head.

"At home with my Mummy!", Hetty cried out beaming, but every other retort was prevented, when Craig made his way back over to them, the tray placed on his head.

"Shots! Shots! Shots!", Lou cried out and Lizzie wondered if Mus would forgive her if she took that blackboard over there and smashed it over his daughter's pretty head.

Probably not. Mus was strangely attached to his offspring for whatever reason.

"Tequila!", Craig shouted, handing out the glasses. "September still not over?", he asked. "Or what are you talking about so animatedly?"

"Manners", Anne said quickly before Wentworth had a chance to open her mouth. "And death, as strangely as that may seem", she added with a sigh.

"_Death is strictly scientific and artificial and evil and legal _(11)", Lizzie explained, nodding in affirmation. "_Death is a dialogue between the spirit and the dust_ (12)"

"Oh really?" Craig mockingly raised an eyebrow. "_Have you heard the news that you're dead _(13), Lizzie?", he asked with a smug smile.

"Yeah, _wouldn't it be great if we were dead_ (13)?", Lizzie asked, more rhetorical than anything else, but Bill Collins saw his chance and seized it.

"Possibly", he said, adjusting his glasses. "After all..._ To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure _(14), right?"

Stunned silence greeted him, when he, his pale blue eyes blinking, finally looked up. Everybody simply stared at him and Hetty and Lizzie were gaping.

"Did you just...", Craig stuttered, completely stupefied. "Did you just quote _Dumbledore_?"

"Ah...I..", Collins stammered, tugging on his collar. Charlotte looked miffed, but this wasn't unusal for her these days and no one paid her any mind.

"That's so _cute_!", Lou squeaked, pinching Collins' cheeks like an old grandma. "That's adorable! Charlotte, you have to keep him, he can quote "Harry Potter"!"

Charlotte simply smiled tight-lipped.

"Oh sweet Jesus", Craig let out, shaking his head. "I thought stuff like that only happened inside my head!"

"_Of course it is happening inside your head_ (15), Craig", Lizzie replied, grinning at Collins. "_But why on earth should that mean that it is not real _(15)?"

The table exploded in boisterous laughter and Collins toasted to Lizzie.

"And I tell you, man!", Craig boomed, patting Collins' shoulder. "You fit in here nicely."

And Collins was beaming.

"Shots! Shots! Shots!", Lou squealed again and the salt and the lime slices were passed around, there was laughter and then a coundown...

And at some point it all kind of blurred together in a whirlwind of phrases, laughter, dirty jokes and even more alcohol.

"_People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk_ (16)", Lizzie quoted Stephen King some time after twelve (with an obvious slur to her voice), gesticulating wildly with a glass in front of Wentworth's face, while Anne, tiny, winy pixie-Anne tried to keep her in check.

Charlotte in the meantime was more than occupied with sucking Collins' lips off his face (she did so with a lot more skill than previously shown in their Anatomy 101 class, where she was told to the same thing with the scalpel – to cut it short, it had been a massacre, that was still starring in Lizzie's nightmares from time to time), while Craig had his work cut out with trying to convince the Groveland-twins that dancing on table-tops was no good idea when wearing mini skirts and when Wentworth finally asked her exasperatedly, why on god's green earth she was always acting like a petulant child, Lizzie answered her in the arrogant-bored demeanour of a film diva that _Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies_ (17), before taking the joint from Anne and inhaling deeply.

Some time later, when the atmosphere reached another screaming, tingling, exploding peak, Lizzie explained the fucked up workings of the world to her avidly listening audience, while standing on the top of their table, an empty beer bottle in her hand, before making them a pick a side.

"So... _Are you on our side..._ (18)", she pointed to Anne and herself, "_and want to be different, or are you on that side _(18)", she pointed the neck of her beer bottle to Charlotte and Wentworth, who were both acting like they weren't part of the scene (didn't their parents tell them that simply closing their eyes wouldn't make them disappear?), "_or are you on that side and want to throw a football at my head!? _(18)"

Anne finally managed to wrestle her down to the utter disappointment of her followers, who were close to crowning her their new Messiah after that evening, clamping a hand over her mouth to keep her from founding some twisted kind of cult and no amount of resistance, be it spitting or biting, could free her from her unwanted muzzle.

But after a while the hand on her mouth became looser and Lizzie softly tugged it away. The buzz was gone and she was in this strange nirvana somewhere between being drunk and hypnotized, a moment of clarity, childish fears and vulnerability.

"_He put the belt around my life_ (19)", she whispered with big, shimmering green eyes, whispering it to Anne like a secret. "_I heard the buckle snap_ (19)."

"I know", Anne whispered back, her eyes round and golden and sympathetic. "I know, sweetheart. But you're not seventeen anymore..."

Lizzie wanted to say something, to just spit out that lump in her throat, that was growing there since that Sunday morning in his apartment, but seconds later there was laughter ringing right around the table.

"And I tell you!", Charlotte cried out. Apparently she'd found back to life. "She lost. Darcy doesn't have a girlfriend, especially not that strange Bing Bang skeleton", Charlotte explained to a bewildered looking Craig, who was rolling another joint between his fingers because the twins were begging for it.

"But he's also not exactly gay", he countered, looking questioningly at Lizzie. "Right?"

She just shrugged. Fucking William Darcy had become some kind of red rag, a motherfucking ten-metre high wall in her mind. She tried not to think about him constantly, but that didn't help her not to stare at his name when it was written at the top of worksheets – or exam papers. In that aspect, she was grateful for Charlotte's running, caustic commentary, because at least it ripped her out of those insane daydreams, she always had when his name surprised her at inconvenient times.

"No, he's not", Anne said in her stead, because Lizzie couldn't think of a possible quote with which to counter.

"Pity", Craig replied, sighing miserably, which made the Groveland-twins and even the raven princess laugh. "I like the tall, dark and handsome type."

"Who doesn't", Anne muttered, gazing at Wentworth, who sat there in all her tall, dark and handsome -glory. "But as it seems, he also prefers brunettes." She nodded towards Lizzie, who glared at her smugly smiling friend. "With breasts", the ambergirl added giggling.

"But Lizzie doesn't have any!", Craig protested, pointing at the objects of their discussion. Feeling offended, Lizzie crossed her arms in front of her chest, glaring at her flatmate with her best death-glare.

"_I will avenge my ghost with every breath I take. I'm coming back from the dead and I'll take you home with me _(20)", she threatened, causing Craig to smile.

"You want to avenge your tits?", he asked, biting his lip. "Or whatever the fuck you call those bumps?"

"She got more than you", Anne countered, throwing peanuts at him.

"Wouldn't be so sure about that", he grunted, before Charlotte took over again.

"Anyway", she said, showing her irritation about loosing the whole attention to Lizzie again. Collins patted her arm reassuringly. "It's not clear if he's gay or not, considering that we all have homosexual tendencies to a certain percentage, but we're all pretty sure that he doesn't have a girlfriend. So I won the bet! What does the bet-commissioner have to say?" She turned to Craig.

"So, considering that it's a lot more fun seeing Lizzie loose a bet than Charlotte, because she actually clears her debts", (he shot Charlotte a pointed glare – the Spanish girl still had to slip a nipple at some football-stadium), "I decide that Charlotte won the bet."

"Traitor!", Lizzie cried out. "_I'll have thy head for this thy traitor's speech_ (21)!" When there was nothing left, there was always Shakespeare. And death threats. How wonderful.

"Oh really?", Craig asked, only mildly impressed. "I think you'll need to plan how you want to go about chopping off my head and then you'll need one of your cute poems to describe it."

"Daddy has an axe in our shed", Lou said and Hetty nodded in affirmation. "I'm pretty sure, he'll lend it to you."

"And Mum will kiss your feet, because it means that the killing-tool-to-be would be out of Henry and Liam's reach", Hetty added.

Lizzie shot Craig a pointed glare, but Craig just laughed and shook his head.

"You have to actually articulate a threat before I consider it proper evidence." He grinned. "Can you?"

A defiant look crossed Lizzie's face, she raised her chin, thinking about possible comebacks.

"Oh, come on, accept it", Anne giggled and patted her back. "You lose. Big time."

Lizzie groaned, chucking down another Tequila-shot, while Charlotte cheered triumphantly.

"Now I can choose your outfit for tomorrow!", she cried out. "Darcy will have a coronary, that's for sure!" She bounced on her seat like a little rubber ball, Collins tried to get a hold of.

"_You will burn in hell_ (22)", Lizzie muttered, slamming her glass back onto the table's smudgy surface.

There wasn't much to do when Shakespeare left you hanging.

* * *

"That's not fair!", Lizzie Bennet whined the next morning on her way to University, while tugging the hem of her skirt over her bottom. "It's bloody, motherfucking December, for crying out loud!"

"Hey, don't you dare and destroy the Christmas spirit!", Charlotte countered, shaking from laughter about Lizzie's current... situation. "Those poor little tots don't deserve to be traumatized by your fucked up vocabulary."

"I'm already traumatizing them with this abnormally short skirt!", Lizzie snarled, holding the hem down with both hands. "I'm pretty fucking sure that people can see my knickers."

"They're pretty knickers", Charlotte giggled.

"Yeah. You choose them", Lizzie grunted. It was fucking cold outside even if there was no snow on the streets yet and she only wore thin nylon tights under this scrap of cloth. "And I think it's all kinds of disturbing that you choose white cotton ones."

"What's your problem with cotton?", Charlotte asked innocently and grinned.

"Is that some kind of Lolita-fantasy between you and Collins?", Lizzie asked, tugging at her white blouse and the tie, which had the same pattern as her skirt. "'Cause this here is a bloody school-uniform."

"Oh!", Charlotte said, acting surprised. "What ticked you off? Was it the skirt? The pigtails? Or the knee-high socks?"

"I hate you, Charlotte Lucas", Lizzie said, not in the mood to play games right now. "And I know why you did this."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah, and I'm not even going to deign it with an answer", Lizzie announced. "You know just as well as I do that our little affair is only happening on the wrong side of your head. In your case, I'd advise a check-up."

Since that sunny Sunday morning, the morning in Darcy's apartment, where he nearly broke down the wall, they were both living in a sort of parallel universe. One, where there had never been more between the two, where he'd never dragged her out of a crowded, seedy club and she'd never kicked him out of her apartment... One, where they'd never been more than student and Professor.

She didn't see him outside of University. Not at Jane and Charlie's place, not in the parking lot and also not in strange underground-clubs in Central London. Hell, she'd even tried the whole blood donating thing, but the people there had sent her away, because not enough time had passed since her last donation. It was like he was living in accordance to that fucking time table she'd joked about that weekend, without ever having sent it of course.

It was maddening and what frustrated her even more was the fact that she actually cared in the first place. She'd spent over a month complaining and ranting about this guy and now, when he wasn't there to annoy her anymore, she was close to climbing walls in her frustration.

They didn't even talk at University. He seemed to ignore her, no matter how sarcastic or biting her comments to his questions became, no matter how far off topic or below the belt she was hitting – he ignored her.

And it shouldn't have hurt so much, there, somewhere between her rips on the left side of her body.

But it did.

"How did you phrase it last night? Only because it's happening inside your head doesn't make it any less real?", Charlotte teased her, cackling like the evil witch from some Disney-film.

"Shut the fuck up, Miss Super-Brain. That's from Dumbledore."

"I'll never understand how you and Anne can be so fascinated by that old crock", Charlotte replied, rolling her eyes.

"And I'll never grasp why you think Collins to be sexually appealing", Lizzie retorted indignantly, crossing her arms in front of her chest. It was really fucking cold and she could see the white, hazy clouds of breath in front of their faces.

It was winter, close to Christmas and it brought back memories. She sighed. The scent of fir needles and candles made her sentimental and she smiled at the thought of celebrating Christmas with the Grovelands and Anne.

"It's none of your business after all!", Charlotte hissed, but it had lost a lot of its usual venom. Lizzie whirled around, looking her flatmate directly in the eye, saw the change, the good-bye, the end.

"I'm going to move in with him", Charlotte said, biting her lower lip. She blinked, her eyes glued to the bloody pavement.

"You what!" Lizzie felt like someone had kicked her in the gut, robbing her of air and other things necessary for surviving and she could barely control herself not to let out a whimper. "But you've together less than a bloody month!"

This was change, was chaos, was the bottomless fall when the security lines came loose.

"I know", Charlotte said. " But he says, when you know, you know and all that. Why dance around it?"

Lizzie blinked, wanting to ask her if she knew that she wasn't living in a god-damn fairy-tale or some Sandra-Bullock-comedy. If she knew that dependencies in a relationship were the death sentence for every free spirit. But a look at Charlotte's dreamy smile told her that she wouldn't want to know anything about it.

She sighed. "You know what I think about it."

Charlotte nodded stiffly. "And I tell you, it's none of your business."

Lizzie curled her hands into fists. "You're using him and that's not fair."

Charlotte raised her chin defiantly.

"He likes you, Charlotte. He really, really likes you. And you, you're only thinking about -"

"I'm happy", Charlotte interrupted her. "He...he loves me...I believe."

"And you?", Lizzie asked, rubbing her freezing arms. "What about you, Char?"

"I... I think I do, too", she whispered and then there was that smile in her eyes, that had never been there before.

"Okay", she said softly, trying to smile encouragingly, to be the friend she'd been the past four years, not the past few weeks. "It's fine, Char."

"Oh, Lizzie!", Charlotte sobbed, flinging her arms around her friend's neck. "Lizzie, Lizzie..."

"Ugh, Charlotte, you're suffocating me!", Lizzie gasped, trying to hold her skirt in place with one free hand. "And you're showing my knickers to the whole bloody world."

"As if they didn't know them", Charlotte grinned right back. There were actually tears in her eyes. "I mean you remember the lingerie-incident from 2012 right?"

Lizzie sighed. "You're grating on my nerves, Lucas."

"You'll miss me."

"I sure as hell will not!", Lizzie revolted. "You're the worst flatmate in the history of horrible flatmates! You put empty milk cartons back into the fridge, you forget to take out the garbage and you always leave on all the hobs when you've been cooking!"

"You forgot the toaster", Charlotte remarked with a grin.

"Right!" Lizzie hit her forehead with her flat palm. "How could I forget that? You're a constant death threat in confined rooms. Does Collins know that ?", she added as an afterthought, sceptically raising an eyebrow.

"I might have mentioned it", Charlotte said sheepishly.

"Charlotte!"

"What? I don't want to scare him away screaming for the cops. The guy has potential and he always does this thing with his index- and middle finger when we're -"

"Urgh, goodness, no, Charlotte!", Lizzie cried out, clamping her hands over her ears. "I don't wanna hear about you two doing the horizontal tango!"

"People can see your underwear", Charlotte deadpanned, pointing at Lizzie's flying skirt hem.

"Argh!", Lizzie cried out, tugging the scrap of clothing back down. "I hate you, Charlotte Lucas! Why the bloody hell didn't you put me in some sexy-nurse costume in the first place? I'm already looking like I escaped some fucking porn film."

"Because it's a lot funnier this way", Charlotte chuckled, giggling at Lizzie's sour face. When Charlotte, after way too little sleep (they'd been in bed at three a.m.), had knocked on her door, thrusting without much ado the pile of clothes (including underwear) into her arms, Lizzie had wanted to choke her with the tie. And the white lace underwear.

She should have done so, because then Craig, who was normally never that early under the living, wouldn't have been able to take compromising photos of her in this attire. Stupid blackmailing material!

"I'll give you funny, you sadist", Lizzie grunted, tugging on her pigtails. "You braided my hair!"

"I know."

"With bows!"

"Exa-a-a-a-ctly!", Charlotte sung grinning, when they turned into the street leading to the faculty of medicine.

"And lipstick!"

"You got it." Charlotte was practically bouncing.

"I want coffee!", Lizzie whined, throwing her hands in the air. "I need caffeine! 4 hours of sleep isn't bloody well enough!"

"Why didn't you just get some?", Charlotte asked bewildered. "There were at least three Costa-places, 2 Prêt-a-manger-shops and at least 6 Starbucks-stores.

"Because I'm pretty fucking sure that sooner or later you would have poured all that stuff over my blouse!", Lizzie complained. "Forget about blisters and third-degree-burns as long as the fabric practically clings to your skin...", she grumbled.

Charlotte grinned, opening the main building's door for them. "Take a look at the clock, little Miss Lolita."

"Why should I do that?", Lizzie asked cautiously, but Charlotte just burst out laughing like a mad woman and sprinted up the stairs leading to the lecture hall.

"Why?!", Lizzie cried out, feeling the panic building up in her veins. "Charlotte!"

"'Cause we're at least five minutes late", the traitor shouted, giggling like a maniac while she opened the door to the lecture hall.

_Oh No, No, No, No, No! _That was the only thing running through Lizzie's head while she cautiously made her way over to the door and into the hall.

Everybody was staring at her and she could hear Charlotte's giggles somewhere in the last rows.

"Miss Bennet", the voice, that was haunting her day and night, sounded. "How wonderful thay you deign to grace us with your presence."

He didn't even look up when he said that, thoroughly occupied with thumbing through the pages of his folder. He wore the same three-piece-suit like he did that day at the parking lot.

"A pleasure as always", Lizzie said sweetly, overplaying the erratic beating of her heart, pounding painfully against her ribcage.

He didn't look up and it made her fucking furious.

"Or should I rather say, it's torture and demand that they carve the order to abandon all hope upon entering into the archway?", she continued with the devil sitting on her shoulder, while the whole student body simply disappeared in front of her eyes. "Is "Inferno" a better description? Or do you want me to -"

"Miss Bennet!" Ah, there he was again and she felt relief coursing through her veins. "Would you please sit down now, you're disturbing -"

That was the exact moment he turned around, stormy eyes full of barely suppressed fury and the old, well-known frown present on his forehead.. His mouth fell open when he saw her.

"Yes, Professor?", Lizzie asked, grinning widely.

"Miss Bennet...", he stuttered and she saw his eyes travelling over her outfit. From the Mary-Janes on her feet, over the knee-high stockings and up to the indecently short plaid skirt. Then further up to the skin-tight white blouse, the pigtails, the loosely knotted tie... to the black bra she wore underneath.

His darting gaze left goosebumps and burning heat in it's wake, which circled her spine, settling a feet below her navel.

"Uhm..." He didn't seem to come up with a response other than his well-known frown and the grin on her face grew even wider.

"Do you like my outfit?", she asked, tugging on her skirt. "Miss Lucas believes it's carnival already."

"Oh, that's... that's...", he stammered, rubbing his temple with one hand.

"I told her that she made a mistake and that carnival isn't for another two months, but she wouldn't have any of it and you know how it is with mentally confused people, don't you?"

"Huh?"

She smiled, leaning in closer. "It's always better to play along with their fantasy", she explained with a wink.

The Professor turned red. "Fantasy...", he said slowly, his gaze stuck somewhere at the tips of her pigtails. "Of course, Miss Bennet. Why don't you sit down?"

"As you wish, Professor", Lizzie nodded with a beatific smile, curtseying before walking up the stairs to the last rows.

There was some whistling, cat-calls, vulgar comments reminding her of tasteless porn film titles and some applause from the male part of the student body, while the expressions on the faces of the female part ranged from simple amusement to downright bloodlust. She took a seat next to Charlotte.

"Don't say it", she grunted, fishing for a pen in her bag, while Darcy ordered the crowd to "finally be quite in god's name", meaning "Shut the fuck up" for normal people.

"Oh please", Charlotte said dismissively. "That little display down there? Pretty close to a core meltdown."  
"Examples from your Physics 101 class won't help you, Lucas."

"But they should", she insisted. "He practically devoured you with his eyes, _Bennet_."

"You really should take your medication", Lizzie replied, eyes glued to the front. "There's a reason the nice doctor prescribed them, you know?"

"And you should stop taking notes for fuck's sake. It's the last lecture, get it in your head!"

"Doesn't mean that it's not important", Lizzie countered.

"Oh please, finals are over, you can crawl out of your little cave of learning now. Hell days are over!"

"Charlotte..."

"Lizzie?" She grinned.

"What do you want?"

"He's staring at you." Charlotte was nearly jumping at the ceiling, so great was her excitement. "I told you so, Lizzie."

"I hate you, Charlotte."

"I know", she said lightly. "But you'll miss me anyway."

Lizzie shook her head, drumming with the tip of her pen on her block. "Medication, Charlotte. _Medication_."

She chuckled, tugging at the bow tied around one of Lizzie's pigtails.

"And for the record, I still think it's a bad idea", Lizzie grumbled.

Charlotte sighed. "I know. Are you still going over to Jane this afternoon?", she asked, changing topics.

Lizzie nodded. "Yeah, later. I promised her I would take a look at the new painting in their living room."

The dream couple's relationship had cracked since that incident with Jane's boss. Suddenly there were pauses in conversations, averted glances, awkward moments at the dining room table. But Jane insisted that everything was all right, that everything was _wonderful, glorious, absolutely perfect_ and sometimes Lizzie wondered if she was the only one, who saw the cracks.

The rest of the lecture flew by, even though there were moments when Darcy looked at her for the first time since that Sunday in his apartment hallway, which were like walking through a honey filled room.

"He's staring", Charlotte wrote in bright, bold letters for the sixth time or so on the edge of Lizzie's college block and Lizzie couldn't help it, there was this mix of panic and euphoria rising in her every time his gaze fell on her. And lingered there.

Fuck, she was her own worst nightmare. One of these topless women with a mane of curly hair on the covers of those romance-porn novels for grand-mothers, who gave in to hot flushes and overwhelming desires and fainted at the bare sight of blood.

Perhaps she should just sleep with him. Get it over with.

She sighed and Charlotte giggled like a mad-woman.

At the end of the lecture, she was one of the last persons to leave the hall, her block held like a shield in front of her chest to block the idiotic comments of the male population, who still seemed to be stuck in puberty. Fucking children, during the past 90 minutes she'd had to return as missiles disguised notes to sender again and again (to Charlotte's utter amusement), because apparently even med students couldn't take a hint.

"Miss Bennet." His voice held her back. Lizzie looked up only to see him watching her with a guarded expression on his face. His eyes didn't dip below her chin. "We should talk."

She nodded. "Tomorrow?", she asked, anxiously biting her lower lip to suppress the smile, bubbling up insider her.

"Tomorrow", he said and it sounded like a promise.

* * *

Five hours later, Lizzie Bennet stumbled into her sister's apartment, still on a wave of euphoria.

"Janie!", she called, kicking off her shoes before tiptoeing barefoot through the empty, but spacious rooms. She was still in her school-uniform, but without the lipstick and the pigtails. "Janie, where are you?"

A sob answered her, then a loud bang and the smashing sound of bursting glass. Somewhere a woman's throaty voice blared through the speakers, off-key and scratching like something from an old record. It smelled like wine, candles and burned diner.

"Janie?"

There were card boxes scattered across the floor all over the apartment. Shelfs were stripped, picture frames broken, even some plates and bowls seemed to contribute to this ocean of fragments.

"Jane?", she asked again, more panicked this time. Another sob, paired with a choked cry came out of the bedroom and fear settled down into her stomach like a parasite.

"Jane, what are you doing?", Lizzie cried out when she finally found her sisters, sitting in between shards of glass, open suitcases, randomly pulled out clothing, pillows and blankets.

She was crying and her small body shaking with sobs. "Jane?"

No reaction. With caution Lizzie put an arm around her sister's shoulders. "Jane..."

Her sister's sobs grew louder, she threw her head back and Lizzie saw tears streaming down her face.

"Jane...", she whispered, more desperate this time, hugging her sister even tighter without caring about those shiny pieces of glass piercing her skin at her knees. "What happened?"

The sobs became even more violent, even more painful and Lizzie tried to hold her, but it was useless.

"He.. Charlie", she sobbed. "Charlie... he left me."

"He what?", Lizzie cried out aghast. Carefully she took her sister's face in between her hands. It was wet and hot from crying, sticky from the salt. There was blood on her lip and Lizzie saw the bloody scratches covering her hands.

"Jane, what the fuck happened?", she demanded to know, but Jane was just rocking back and forth in a hospitalising motion.

"I came home", she whispered hoarsely. "I came home and he was gone! He was gone, Lizzie!"

"Janie...", Lizzie whispered, her eyes burning.

"He's gone", Jane croaked, staring into space. "There's just that letter..."

Lizzie looked around. There was a folded piece of paper, buried under another broken picture frame, showing Jane and Charlie laughing in an autumnal Hyde-Park, but before Lizzie could grab it, Jane had wound her own fingers tightly around her sister's wrist.

Her grip was painfully hard.

"He said, Darcy found a place for a Caroline in a rehab centre. Somewhere in Derbyshire", she whispered, her voice sounding raw and bloody. "He told me Darcy offered him to stay with him and his sister at Pemberley... for the time being. So that I..." Tears filled her eyes again. "So that I have enough time to pack my belongings and..." Another sob broke through and Lizzie felt panic rising inside her. "...get them out. He's going to live with Darcy!", she yelled, slamming her palm flat against another broken frame's surface. Lizzie could practically hear how the skin burst.

"He's going to live with Darcy?", she asked barely audible and it was like time was standing still. Like everything was resting in that moment, the scratchy music, Jane's sobs, the blood trickling from her hand. Like this whole bloody battlefield was starting to rotate slowly with Lizzie as its axis.

"Darcy's leaving?", she whispered against the lump in her throat and the fear and panic in her stomach threatened to overwhelm her.

But Jane didn't hear her.

"He left me!", she cried out, rocking back and forth with her arms slung around her upper body, the blood on her hands soaking the soft caramel fabric of her cardigan, while Lizzie sat there on her knees like a statue, with the shards of glass slowly drilling through her skin.

"I can't stay here", Jane pleaded suddenly, grabbing Lizzie's hand and looking at her with those bright blue eyes. "Please, I can't stay here!"

"You can come with me", Lizzie whispered, feeling a fist slowly closing around her heart and stomach, holding her in a tight grip. "Charlotte's moving out. You can come with me."

"No, No, No!", Jane howled. "I want to go home! Please, Lizzie, I want to go home!"

Lizzie stared at her hands, her numb, unfeeling hands. "Then go home, Janie."

"You have to come with me", Jane pleaded, weaving her own slender, bleeding fingers around Lizzie's.

"Please, Lizzie, tell me you'll come home with me!"

Lizzie stared at her, stared into those innocent, blue eyes, pleading with her, stared at the hands holding her own, stared at her body, her own numb, insensitive body, which couldn't even feel the shards piercing her skin and nodded. Slowly.

"I'll come home."

She called Anne. Charlotte and Collins. Craig and the twins. And when they were all standing in the apartments entryway in various states of hungover from the birthday party last night, Anne armed with tea, the boys with rubbish bags, Lizzie let them in, let herself get hugged by Anne, teased by Craig and then she took her shoes and ran through the cold December air with her bleeding knees, a way too short skirt and nearly transparent blouse.

She ran through underground halls, ran through nearly every train, ran down the long streets, packed with humans and fake Santas, children and cars and nearly forgot that heels weren't really suitable for sprinting.

But she ran.

She knew she was too late, knew it the moment Jane had opened her mouth to scream.

She was late, so fucking late.

She felt the earth yielding under her feet, felt how the known foundations, Charlotte in her apartment, a laughing Jane, a frowning Darcy, broke away. This was the apocalypse, was the battlefield, was the end of everything and the beginning of nothing.

And she was only a little girl in an unfitting school-uniform.

But she ran.

She didn't feel the cold air, didn't feel how it blew through her clothes and cut her skin open like a knife, didn't feel the blood running down her knees and how her feet and eyes were burning.

_They are gone_ (23), the voice in her head, which was still drunk from last night, was still reciting poetry like a broken record, whispered. _Along these gardens moves a wind bringing rain and leaves filling the air with fear and sweetness_ (23).

He made a promise, he said they would talk tomorrow, but today was today and tomorrow was tomorrow.

And she was only a domino, a leave in the middle of the fucking ocean.

But she ran.

She found the medical faculty, sprinted down the hallway and up the stairs leading to Darcy's office and found Dolly there, the old secretary with the grey hair and the permanent wave, who loved sweaters with cats on it.

"Professor Darcy is not here", the secretary announced after watching the panting, gasping girl in the indecent outfit for a good two minutes. "He handed in his resignation an hour ago."

She didn't say anything, just turned around, marching down the hallway, walking over the shards of glass as if they were silks and satins.

He made a promise, told her he wouldn't go, wouldn't leave her. _I_ _won't_, he said, but he lied.

He was gone and every promise was now null and void.

Charlotte, Jane, Charlie..._Darcy_. They would go, were gone already.

And Lizzie would go home.

She looked up into the sky, stared at this steel-grey winter sky without snow.

_When you were in Paris we met here_ (23).

**End of Volume 1**

* * *

1\. a wind has blown the rain away, blown – E.E. Cummings

2\. Autumn - Grace Paley

3\. the hills – E.E. Cummings

4\. My Way Home is though You – My Chemical Romance

5\. Wake me up when September ends – Green Day

6\. Liar – Taking Back Sunday

7\. Die Liebenden – Berthold Brecht

8\. Bury your Flame – La Dispute

9\. William Shakespeare

10\. Francois De La Rochefoucauld

11\. dying is fine) but death – E.E. Cummings

12\. Death is a dialogue between – Emily Dickinson

13\. Dead – My Chemical Romance

14\. Dumbledore in „Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone "

15\. Dumbledore in „Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

16\. Stephen King

17\. Childhood is the Kingdom where nobody dies – Edna St. Vincent Millain

18\. Gerard Way

19\. He put the belt around my life – Emily Dickinson

20\. It's not a fashion statement, it's a deathwish – My Chemical Romance

21\. King Henry the Sixth – William Shakespeare

22\. Liar Liar (Burn in Hell) – The Used

23\. along the brittle, treacherous bright streets – E.E. Cummings

* * *

**A/N: So (ducks behind sofa) what do you think? I had this whole school-uniform thing in my mind for a while and even though this will never be one of those typical Student-teacher-relationships, I like to play with it a bit;)  
**

**So we wrapped up some things, Jane and Charlie were meant to happen that way, just as Charlotte and Collins. Wentworth and Anne are... being complicated? **

**And Lizzie is going home, at least for the holidays. So next stop is Meryton, guys! Chime in and leave your opinions!**

**Thanks to all of you, who reviewed, followed and favourited this story, I love all of you! **


	20. Chapter 19 How to smell snow

**A/N: Uh... Hi? Remember me? That weird girl writing an even weirder story? I'm...uh... back? **

**It's been a bit crazy around here, Uni's kicking my ass already, but I got a lot of great classes about brains and genetics and traumata and... You really don't wanna know, right? Okay, then lets get back to the story.**

**Perhaps a few of you noted, I expanded my profile for some FAQs, because I don't want to write a monologue at the beginning of every chapter to answer frequent or ****guest ****questions . Last time Joanna shared her concerns about Lizzie being too damaged to be redeemed. I disagree, but you can get the whole story on my profile. In short: This story is a journey, she's not in the right place now, but she will be. **

**That okay? Awesome.**

**IMPORTANT! I always list songs for each chapter, but this one's really fucking special and I really, really want to make listening to it mandatory for reading this chapter, but alas, won't let me. But I plead you to listen to it. Really guys, I'm begging you here. "Safer in the Forest/Love Song for Poor Michigan" from La Dispute fits this chapter to a tee and even if it's not your kind of music, read the lyrics, they're just so great!**

**Soundtrack: **

****Safer in the Forest/Love Song for Poor Michigan** \- La Dispute ( LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!)  
**

**From Heads Unworthy - Rise Against**

**The Way Home - The Airborne Toxic Event **

**Disclaimer: My kind of Meryton is somewhere in the North West of England, Lancashire, Morecambe Bay. Not Hertfordshire. Definitely not Hertfordshire. **

_**On a last note... This chapter is really fucking personal and at the same time... not at all. **_

* * *

**Chapter 19: How to smell snow  
**

_"It's not the weather in the city or the highway moan.  
Not the streets or the buildings, neither wooden nor stone.  
Every reason to leave this place behind, why I should be alone,  
Are made of flesh and bone."_

_Safer in the Forest/Love Song for Poor Michigan - La Dispute_

She was sitting on top of the old, rusty Ford's engine bonnet, staring over the cliffs right at the all consuming black ocean, waiting for the snow to fall. The cigarette's glowing end was the only light in the darkness.

Meryton hadn't changed.

She didn't know, why the hell she'd expected that. Why the years, she'd stayed away from this town, should have changed it more than those, she'd spent here growing up. But she'd believed it, believed that the breach, she'd provoked, the tearing of the strings binding her to this place, would be as noticeable here as it had been for her that night, when she'd taken the train to London.

She'd expected a yawning chasm straight through the village, where devils were escaping hell's cruel fangs, had expected houses in ruins, dust in the air and people screaming and crying while the sirens were blaring.

She'd hoped for the apocalypse and had come face to face with the old, well-known small-town idyll and even the goddamn bird on top of the church steeple still had the nerve to sing his old song.

Lizzie hadn't wanted to come.

The expression "not wanted" was the more polite version in this case. She'd wanted to kick and scream, clamour and rage, had wanted to chain herself to her bed and go on a hunger strike, but she'd been too numb, too lost in silence after the adrenaline-high, to do more than protest weakly.

Anne had been worried.

Lou and Hetty had been enraged.

Craig had just shrugged.

And Lizzie? Lizzie had just stuffed some random articles of clothing into the old military backpack from last summer's garage sale, stolen the remnants of Craig's weed supply and turned off the radio every single time some stupid Christmas carol was playing, all the while watching Charlotte pack her belongings into neat little carton boxes.

She took a drag from her cigarette, feeling the smoke invading her lungs, _tickling, warming, calming_. Normally she hated cigarettes, didn't smoke anything besides the occasional joint here and there and she planned on throwing away the leftover packets the moment she made it out of this hell hole.

If she made it.

After her boyfriend's sudden departure Jane had made herself at home in Lizzie's and Charlotte's apartment, because she couldn't stand the silence, as she'd put it, and turned into the fucked up version of a hyperactive Christmas elf.

Cooking, cleaning and decorating the entire apartment with singing Rudolph, the red-nosed Reindeer–figures, which Craig had always _accidentally_ thrown out of the window at any given moment, had been her first priority and while baking batch upon batch of smiling cinnamon cookies, she'd sung horribly off-key along the lines of "Jingle Bells" and every other carol blasting through the speakers. During those episodes Lizzie had chosen refuge in Craig's apartment and the two of them had been smoking weed on his balcony until Jane had exhausted herself to the point of breaking down to a weeping and sobbing mess on the kitchen floor, which had to be put to bed by her sister.

Yeah, Jane reminded her of a Stepford-robot from time to time and Lizzie had seen the wheels turning in Anne's pretty head, when she'd taken in those trillions of baking tins resting on top of Charlotte's still half-open boxes, which were scattered all over the apartment, Jane's beaming smile and Lizzie's and Craig's bloodshot eyes.

"Are you sure that everything's alright with you?", she'd asked and Lizzie had only been able to nod numbly, shoving another cookie in her mouth – she'd still been high at that point while "Driving Home For Christmas" had been blaring through the radio, driving her fucking insane.

She still could hear the melody playing in her head and she remembered that she'd loved that song as a kind, that she'd been dancing around the house singing along and she thought that it was so damn ironic that now, on Christmas Eve, she was sitting on top of a car, adamantly refusing to even consider driving home at this point.

This town wasn't home anymore.

She saw the clouds hiding the moon, a wind came up and she buried herself deeper in her black, oversized coat.

The evening before her departure it had started snowing. Thick, white flakes, dancing in front of her window, covering all that city-grey with white and she'd _hoped, yearned, prayed _for the harmless looking compounds of oxygen and hydrogen to sabotage the whole British railway system.

But whoever was responsible for fulfilling wishes hadn't been able to hear her over the snowstorm and when stumbling down the platform at King's Cross Station early the next morning, she'd wanted nothing more than to beat the guy in the cheesy Santa-costume, who so stupidly cheerfully wished them a Happy Christmas while sounding a bell, round the head with her oversized backpack just to shut him up.

Jane had reserved them seats in a compartment in the back of the train and while the passing scenery had begun to blur into a clusterfuck of random colours and lines, she'd imagined that she was on her way to Hogwarts, but the illusion had faded pretty quickly when Jane's fake cheery voice had pierced her fantasy bubble made of cauldron cakes and chocolate frogs, leaving a bitter taste on the back of her tongue and she'd spent the remaining part of the journey hidden under her oversized coat, which Craig had given her shortly before he'd left to visit his family in Ireland.

"Helps with hiding", he'd said, thrusting the garment into her hands. The smooth, dark material had crackled softly under her fingertips, but she also saw fairies playing under the ceiling when she was high. "Not as good as Harry Potter's, but it'll do its job."

"But won't you need it?", she'd asked with that burning, choking lump in her throat, haunting her since apocalypse day.

"I'm a lost cause", he'd said with this bitter, resigned smile, that should have sent all her warning bells ringing, but she'd been too occupied with herself, too high to focus on bloody anything.

"Thanks", she'd said, wrapping the coat around her shoulders. It had been warm, protective and she'd had the feeling she wouldn't take it off for the duration of this visit.

The farther north they'd come, the more miles the train had eaten up until only a small fraction of those 250 miles distance from before had remained, the deeper she'd buried herself in her coat and between her headphones, which were holding up her skull, all the while blocking out her sister's inane chatter, who, in this painfully shrill, artificial way, had been so excited to finally come home like they were part of some bloody Disney-film, expecting Lizzie to feel the same way.

She'd felt it already at that point. The constriction. Had felt it in the air, in the lack of oxygen, in the cold, stiffening her limbs, making her crawl deeper into her coat, had felt it in the lack of colours changing the world around her into dreary black and white contrasts.

Coming home was sobering. Like a reversed evolution taking off every sign of change, metamorphosing back into the person you've been at sixteen or seventeen. Small towns had a way to _preserve, keep, hold on_ to something, be it traditions, stories or even human beings.

Or the images, they had of them.

She thought of her tattoo, smiling happily at the thought that there were things they couldn't take from her. Things even he couldn't undo.

She filled her lungs with smoke, lifting her knees up to her chest. The snow would come. She knew it.

When the train had finally entered the small train station in Meryton, Lizzie, for a few precious minutes, during which she'd felt like the _Lizzie in the school-uniform before entering her sister's apartment_ again, had refused to leave the train, to even move an inch away from her seat.

She'd wanted to go on, to keep going, further up into the north-west of England, right over the cliffs and into the Irish Sea. It was dumb, that thought, idiotic, childish, because she knew that Meryton was the train's final destination.

There was no going further.

Jane had let out an exasperated sigh and Lizzie had wished that she was still baked.

"Come on, Lizzie!", her sister had squeaked in that unnaturally high voice and Lizzie could have sworn, she'd painted her cheeks with rouge, the shrill red colour had burned in her eyes and made them tear. "Mum is waiting outside and look! Lydia and Kitty are there, too!"

Lizzie had blinked, feeling her stomach churn. She hadn't seen her mother and younger sisters for close to three years at that point, and overlooking sporadic phone conversations, she mostly tried to avoid, they hadn't had much contact at all in that time.

When she'd returned from Africa five years ago, Jane had been overcome with relief and happiness, anger and sorrow. She'd been so ecstatic and then absolutely crestfallen when Lizzie had adamantly refused to even consider coming home the first few months, to just cross those 250 miles distance between London and Morecambe Bay, now that she was on the same continent again.

She had been able to hear her mother's hues and cries through the wall and the telephone, but she'd stayed firm and they hadn't met again until some godawful family celebration somewhere in Nottinghamshire six months later.

This was the first time in five years that she was back in Meryton.

"Jane!" Her mother's shrill voice had pierced her ears the moment she'd finally left the train and before she'd been able to say knife, she'd been enveloped in a cloud of perfume, bouncing curls and scarves, while a strong pair of arms had hugged her tightly.

"And Lizzie!", Mrs Bennet had cried out. "My Lizzie! Finally you're home!" Those plumb arms, which were slung around her body, pressed her even closer to her mother's rather large bosom and Lizzie had wondered if all her concerns about Meryton had been for naught, since death by suffocation had seemed entirely possible at the time.

"Mum, you're choking her", Kitty had chimed in, gum-snapping and eye-rolling.

"Don't talk such nonsense, Katherine Bennet! As if I would choke my own child!", Lizzie's mother had revolted, but she'd also put her at arm's length as if to examine her.

"Oh, my dear child, look how skinny you are!", she'd cried out, pinching Lizzie's cheeks. "I thought Jane was joking, when she told me that during our last conversation. She was worried, the poor soul, and I thought she was exaggerating!"

Fanny Bennet had shaken her head with her curls coiffed into a fifties hairstyle, while her pearl necklace and her cherry red coloured lips had been trembling with the force of her shock.

"But now that I finally see you... Child, you're only skin and bones! Are you eating enough? We'll fix that. A few decent meals and you'll be as good as new!"

"I'm fine... Mum", Lizzie had spit out through gritted teeth, throwing an irritated glance in Jane's direction, but the Stepford-robot her sister had changed into after Charlie's departure, had only smiled in delight at this happy family reunion.

"Rubbish!", Mrs Bennet had squeaked. "You're looking like one of those broomsticks from TV and I tell you in all honesty, dear girl, that is not healthy." This had overwhelmed her for a moment and it had stopped her monologue for a minute. "You're not anorexic, Lizzie, right? Like this girl... this... what's her name again? Lydia? Donatella Versace's daughter?"

"Allegra." Lydia, too, had been chewing on her bubble gum in time with her sister. It had been strangely fascinating.

"Right! Allegra Versace! Such a pretty girl and thin like the weathercock on Mrs Goulding's shed -"

"Mum..." Lizzie's grip on her backpack had strengthened and she'd wanted nothing more than to throw the coat's hood over her head and disappear, but she'd known that this would be a rather futile attempt at Meryton's train station. A dark hooded figure in between those twenty people milling around there would be a lot more noticeable than between the constant three hundred travellers at King's Cross.

"Why such a pretty girl does something like that to herself completely eludes me!", Mrs Bennet had continued, not in the least perturbed by her daughter's vehement protests, while still holding her hostage with her bright red painted fingernails. "Men don't like bony women. How should they! They'd constantly have to be afraid of impaling themselves!"

Lizzie had raised an eyebrow at that, shooting a glance at Jane, but the robot hadn't seemed to have understood the accidental innuendo and the gum-snapping-sisters had looked just as clueless, which Lizzie had attributed to either selective perception or long-term use of intoxicants.

"You should follow Lydia's exemple!", Mrs Bennet had continued, not caring about the fact that they'd been standing in the middle of a platform and that two of her daughters had still been carrying their luggage. "She's very popular with the boys in Meryton and -"

"Mum, I'm not anorexic, okay?", Lizzie had finally been able to interrupt her. "You should rather ask Jane how she feels since _You-know-who_ has left her, don't you think?"

Jane had given her a dirty look at that, but she hadn't been able to do much more, because it had been her turn to face the onslaught of Mrs Bennet's overwhelming concern for her daughter's well-being. That woman was a force of nature and Lizzie had been more than a bit relieved that Jane possessed feelings other than medicinally induced happiness.

She flicked the ash off her cigarette and stared over the edge of the cliff, where she could hear the everlasting crashing of waves upon waves on cold, hard rocks. The break up with Charlie had broken something inside her sister, something important. She hadn't heard the snapping sound at first, hadn't been able to hear it over the shattering of picture frames and the numbness in her limbs, but it hadn't healed together with the cuts in Jane's palm and it was like a discordance, a badly tuned instrument, a shattered glass of water and it sent shivers down Lizzie's spine every single time she was in a room together with her.

She had turned around to face her younger sisters, who had still been occupied with kneading chewing gums between their teeth and for the forty-sixth time in probably just as many days she'd felt like she was part of the Twilight Zone.

Both girls, who, at one point or another, had been just as brunette as Lizzie, were now bleached blond with straight hair and permanent make-up, both wearing the pseudo-sportive-look Hollister liked to advertise. They looked they'd been cloned and it hadn't helped matters much when both mouths had popped open at Lizzie's last words.

"Jane was together with Voldemort?", Lydia had cried out, half-astonished, half-aghast and Lizzie had seen her fingers jerking towards the smartphone in her left jeans pocket as if she had to share this bit of information as soon as possible with the rest of Meryton's population.

It wouldn't have been much of a surprise if they'd formed a witch-hunt by mid-day.

"I thought she lived with that fuck hot, blond doctor", Kitty had interjected, snapping her gum like it was the acoustic version of a question mark.

"Is he on the market again?", Lydia had asked, grinning like a Cheshire-cat. "Uh! He could play doctor with me!"

"Of course he's available again!", Kitty had answered with a shake of her pony-tail. "He dumped Jane, did you forget? Also.. .do you really want to start something with a guy, who has red eyes and a nose like a snake?"

"Who says he has a nose like that?", Lydia had asked, raising her C-cups to let them see daylight.

"Lizzie. She said that Jane's been living with Voldemort", Kitty had replied in earnest and Lizzie had looked at her sister, who was close to being nineteen years of age, with a mix of horrified astonishment and the morbid fascination of watching a really nasty car accident where you just can't look away.

"Wonderful to see you again", she'd muttered, examining the bubble-gum-twins with new-found scrutiny. "Did they wash you two together? And put you through a meat-grinder?"

A simultaneous plop. Both had ripped open their eyes, matching their gaping mouths. "Are you emo now?", Lydia had asked. "I knew London people are dressing strange, but that..." Both had looked at Lizzie's oversized, black hooded coat with obvious distaste.

"Pleasure to meet again, Lyds", Lizzie had grumbled, rolling her eyes in annoyance. She'd barely been able to suppress the urge to turn around and see if there was someone behind her, the conspicuous feeling of being watched had crawled up and down her spine, but that was typical for Meryton and people in black clothes.

Or perhaps she was just conditioned to feel that way. Small towns do that to you.

"Don't call me that!", Lydia had protested, throwing her blonde, not completely natural mane of hair over her shoulder. "No one callls me by that childish name anymore." Both Lydia and Kitty had screwed up their pretty faces at that.

"Oh really?", Lizzie had asked, her nerves thin as nylon threads. "What do they call you instead, little one?"

"Simply L.", Lydia had spit back, raising her chin, while Mrs Bennet had still been jumping around Jane like Collins at his best times. Lizzie had felt no sympathy for her, any emotion was better than creepy felicity after her break-down and she'd still been more than a bit pissed off that her sister had dragged her back home against her will. "And that's K."

"Okay, _Simply L_.", Lizzie had replied as sardonic as possible in her wrought up state. "How about you and that other lonely letter show me where that damn car is waiting, alright?"

She'd pushed past them unceremoniously to get to the stairs, still hearing Mrs Bennet crying for "poor Janie" and Kitty revolting that she was in no way a letter and definitely not lonely, before she'd had her headphones out again, drowning everything around her in music.

It was strange to be back again. Like watching an old film, you loved as a teenager, years later again and even though the actors, the storyline, plot and setting didn't change, your own perception was a different one now. Colours, which had seemed so bright once, were now dull; the great love story, which had seemed so extraordinary and fulfilling, was now a trivial romance with bad dialogues and cheesy declarations of love; the horror, which had threatened to consume everything, reduced to weak shadows in the graffiti covered concrete walls of the ridiculously small train station.

Nonetheless, during the entire ride over to Longbourn she'd looked out for the chasm, the abyss, she was convinced to find here, but all she'd been able to see where paved streets and the diffuse fog, hanging over everything.

"Do you recognize it", Mrs Bennet had chimed from the front seat, gazing into the rear-view mirror to see Lizzie sitting in the back-seat, packed between Tideldi and Tideldum, who were still snapping their gums in synchrony. "So much has changed these past few years! There's a playground next to the elementary school, they renovated the church roof, oh and Mrs Long has chopped down the old oak tree in front of her house, because she was afraid it would fall on her roof one day. Her niece has apparently seen something like that in her cards and ever since then Agatha is convinced that misfortune is following her every step of the way!" Fanny Bennet had shaken her head, barely escaping a threatening collision with another vehicle by swerving back into her lane. "The poor woman is completely hysterical as soon as a thunderstorm is coming along!"

Jane, who'd been sitting right next to her mother, had nodded enthusiastically. "That's true, Lizzie. A lot of things have changed here." She'd pointed out of the window with her index finger. "They built a new street over there. Look! Do you remember Jack Goulding?"

"The guy, whose shins I nearly broke when kicking them?", Lizzie had asked dryly, trying to ignore the feeling of not being able to breathe.

"Lizzie!", her mother had cried out, but she'd just rolled her eyes. "The poor guy is still traumatised because of that!"

"Believe me, not because of that", Lizzie had grumbled, which Kitty apparently had found so amusing that she'd giggled, sounding like a mad chicken.

"Anyway", Jane had interrupted her mother's tirade about the proper behaviour of young ladies, no matter if they were five or twenty-five. "Jack and his wife Vanessa have just moved into their new home – they expect their first child in March."

Mrs Bennet had just sniffed condescendingly. "They married in September", she'd said, pursing her red painted lips in disapproval. "You could see everything! No matter how cunningly Mrs Tillinger cut the dress, you could still see that the bride shouldn't be allowed to wear white in a church. I raised my daughters better than that!"

"Oh really?", Lizzie had asked with a healthy portion of her usual sarcasm. "If I'm not mistaken it was you, who'd advised Jane to stop taking the pill to tie Charlie closer to her, right?"

"But that's different!", her mother had cried out, making a dangerous swerve into the neighbouring lane. "How can you compare dear Jane with that Redrose-girl, Lizzie? They have nothing in common, I tell you! Vanessa has let herself get knocked up with some bastard child and now she's a lumberjack's wife and my dear, sweet Jane could have been a doctor's wife if she'd acted a bit more sensibly!"

"Mum, Jack Goulding is working at this father's wood processing factory. That doesn't make him a lumberjack", Jane had interjected quietly, still deadly pale from the mention of her ex-boyfriend's name.

"But he's always wearing those horrible flannel shirts!", Fanny Bennet had protested and she'd seen the pearl necklace shaking with indignation.

"Which Vanessa surely bought for him", Lizzie had remarked, remembering the girl from school as a rather shy, but genuinely nice person.

"I told you that girl has no taste whatsoever!", her mother had blared right through her thoughts. "Throwing herself at some lumberjack and slipping the poor guy a bastard, too, that's so -"

"Vanessa Redrose is a slut", Lydia had chimed in with another snap of her bubble pink gum. "Everybody knows that."

"All Redroses are sluts", Kitty had confirmed her sister's point with an energetic nod.

"Oh really?", Lizzie had asked caustically. "The men, too?"

"But of course not the -"

"Men can't be -"

"How should men be -", both Lydia and Kitty had revolted and if Lizzie hadn't been mistaken, Mama Bennet had also thrown in her two cents.

"Sluts?", Lizzie had asked, raising an eyebrow, while Jane had just shaken her head in disapproval. "Pretty easily, children. It happens when they simply fuck as many people as -"

"Look Lizzie, there are some new houses over there!", Jane had interrupted her sisters rather heated explanation, pointing with her index finger at a number of houses, built on strictly measured properties, spitting smoke like dragons waiting for an order to attack.

"How nice", Lizzie had commented the sight of the terraced houses, at which she'd felt nothing but blood-curdling horror.

"Don't you think?", Fanny Bennet had cried out. "This project was the talk of the town for months and now all these young families are living there. Alas..." She'd let out a sigh, shooting Jane a glance. "Another few months and my Janie could have been one of them." A shake of the head and Jane had frozen in her seat. "If she'd just followed my advice and exchanged those pills for a bunch of harmless Tic Tacs, perhaps then I could have been a grandmother soon!", she cried out rapturously.

"Because it's something entirely different if Jane snatches herself a rich husband, right? Does the end then suddenly justify the means?", Lizzie had asked heatedly.

"Lizzie...", Jane had tried to calm her down, but Lizzie had only stared at the back of her mother's head with angrily glistening eyes, while her insides felt _severed, distanced, buried_.

"I only want what's best for my girls!", Mrs Bennet had replied a bit indignantly, gripping the steering wheel even tighter with her red painted claws. "Don't you dare question that, young lady!"

"Oh really? Did you want the best for me, too?", Lizzie had demanded to know, her hands curled into fists.

"But of course!", Mrs Bennet had screeched. "And I tell you Lizzie, the Cavanaughs -"

At the mention of that family's name it had suddenly become deathly quiet inside the car and the temperature, too, had dropped a few degrees. Jane had cringed, the twin's gums had plopped, nearly dropping out of their mouths and Lizzie... Lizzie had grown deathly pale and her eyes, which normally sparkled so brightly, had been dull and empty like the ones of a doll. Or like the empty eye sockets of a scarily smiling skull.

"Mum...", Jane had said softly to a rather enraged Mrs Bennet, who'd been muttering something about ungrateful brats. "Mum, perhaps you should -"

"What should I do, Jane? Not care about my own children?", the fifty-year old lady, dressed in an outfit right from the sixties with a pearl necklace and countless New-Age-Miracle-bracelets dangling from her wrists had revolted. "Good Gracious, that affair is five years old. I just wanted to say that the Cavanaugh family is still living in that old mansion at then end of the street and that Lizzie could just - "

" - apologize?", Lizzie had finished her mother's sentence, shaking her head in disbelief.

"Lizzie, I don't think -", Jane had started another attempt at saving the situation, but Lizzie had interrupted her harshly.

"Just leave it, Jane", she'd grunted, putting her headphones back in place. "Nothing has changed here."

The basses, sounds and voices had filled her head, while Mrs Bennet had been complaining about her wayward daughter's stubbornness, Jane had been trying to calm her down and those two lonely letters had been snapping their gums in synchrony.

She'd taken a look out of the window, had seen Mr Lewis opening his kiosk, the old weathered Lagnese-sign still in place, had seen Mrs Tillinger and Mrs Hill chatting at the corner of First and Maine, had seen the fog on the streets, the old, well-known fog, which crawled into limbs and bones, freezing toes and finger tips.

They'd driven by the town's church, the snow on roofs and on both sides of the streets had been grey and dirty and there hadn't been a chasm as far as the eye could see and the bird on the church steeple had still been singing the same god-damn song.

"Nothing at all", she'd whispered, closing her eyes.

Lizzie sighed, taking another drag of her cigarette. The wind had become stronger, tugging on her hair like an unruly second-grader and she breathed in the scent of salt and ocean, thinking that this was the only place in Meryton where she felt free.

The lack of change... it was one of the reasons, why she felt as if someone had stitched up her throat and glued it together with surgical glue when she was over there. This place was like a conserved record, an air pocket inside a piece of amber, a bacteria strain under a microscope. Nothing changed here, nobody broke out of this circle of children, adults and grand-parents. It was always the same. The same old stories, the same gossip, the same prejudices.

Babys grew into children, who went to kindergarten and then elementary school and made play dates in the afternoons. Children grew into teenagers, who drove to the neighbouring town to go to school, stole their parents booze on the weekends and smoked their first cigarette down at the beach bonfires.

Teenagers became adults, who either did an apprenticeship at their parents firms or went to Lancaster or Preston to study, only to come back after a few years to do their jobs and settle down. They got married, became parents, became the men, who met at the local Pub in the evenings, the soccer mums, who cheered for their kids on the sidelines and argued with teachers on parents-conference days, they grew older, became the local gossips, running the rumour mill, became grandparents who filled the living rooms on holidays and gave advice freely if unwanted.

It was always the same and there was no escape. A microcosms in a macrocosm, a personal solar system revolving around itself, birthing and burying generation upon generation without something piercing their bubble of contentedness. It didn't really help that the next town was over ten miles away.

It was driving her fucking crazy and Lizzie's fingers itched at the thought even though she was five miles outside of Meryton sitting on a cliff. She still felt them breathing down her neck.

Another sigh and another drag. The clouds became thicker in the pale moonlight, the wind grew stronger.

Over the holidays Longbourn had filled with relatives of every kind. Aunts, uncles, grand-parents, even great-aunt Alice had come to spend the holidays in a house full of people, food and decorations smelling of oranges and cinnamon and Lizzie had been passed along from uncle to great-aunt, who'd all examined her like an exotic animal, arguing over her clothes and interrogating her meticulously about the progress of her studies, her marital status and her possible return to Meryton like they were items on a questionnaire.

At some point, Lizzie had hidden herself behind her great-aunt Alice, while the others were busy decorating the Christmas tree, drinking eggnog and getting louder and louder. Lydia and Kitty had especially livened up under the influence of legal highs and even Mary, who usually preached about the perils of alcohol consume (including the fact that it was a sin and the church forbid it), had lost a lot of her usual inhibitions and had soon been dancing around the Christmas tree with her younger sisters.

Great-aunt Alice was over ninety and her hearing correspondingly bad despite her two hearing aids, which had presented the perfect defence for Lizzie, because nobody dared to enter the two metre radius around the old lady in fear of being caught in one of her screaming matches.

Lizzie on the other hand had been perfectly content with hiding behind her, ignoring her tirades and outbursts, because she seldom expected an actual answer and drinking her coke mixed with whiskey until her vision had begun to blur and the walls had started spinning.

This had lasted for the good part of an hour or two until Jane, who was the only one not afraid of great-aunt Alice, had appeared right beside her, keeping her from refilling her glass for the sixth or seventh time or so.

"Don't you think you had enough?", her sister had asked, eyeing her with barely hidden disapproval and concern.

"Don't be such a killjoy", Lizzie had mumbled, freeing her hand from Jane's grasp.

"_Lizzie_..."

"Jane...", Lizzie had imitated Jane's serious tone before she'd started giggling like a madwoman. "Come on, Janie-Paney! I'm not the only drunk corpse around here, so why don't you take care of the nun and those two lonely letters over there and leave me the fuck alone?" She'd pointed at the bubble-gum-twins. Lydia had been occupied with shaking her generous C-cups in rhythm to "Jingle Bells", Mrs Bennet had joined in happily and the pearl necklace had been shaking. "They need your concern more than I do, don't you think so too, Aunt Alice?"

Her great-aunt had nodded energetically, the glass with eggnog bouncing in her hand. "Yes, yes, yes", the old lady had said. "Cameron is an idiot, we all know that. Thinks he can fool us, the poor soul, but being related to the queen doesn't excuse anything, I tell you!"

Lizzie had grinned. "There you have it, Janie", she'd said, reaching for the bottle of Whiskey. "Great-aunt Alice is of the same mind. Even though her thoughts about Cameron are more than a bit disturbing."

"Lizzie..." With her brow furrowed, Jane had looked down on her younger sister. "What are you doing? Why are you hiding here? You should better come and help me and Mum with preparing dinner, or decorate the tree with the other three, what do you think?"

"With Huey, Dewey and Louie?" She'd pointed with her chin at said group of imbeciles, who'd been in the process of not only decorating the tree, but themselves, too – Lydia had put one of the bright red Christmas bulbs into her cleavage.

"Or do you mean the nun and the two letters? God, that sounds like porn...", Lizzie had laughed, nudging great-aunt Alice with her elbow. "Don't you think so, Aunt Alice?"

"Yes, yes", the old lady had said and nodded. "The price for eggs has increased drastically these past few years, I tell you, dear child!"  
"Lizzie..."

"Nah, I think I'll stay with good ol' Alice here", Lizzie had said, taking another sip of the alcoholic beverage in her hand. "She has such interesting stories to tell."

"Put on your gas masks!", the old lady had cried out that exact moment. "Put them on and be save. Nobody knows what Hitler has in store for you! Put on your gas-masks!"

Jane's mouth had popped open, while Lizzie had just shrugged, shooting her sister one of her _"I-fucking-told-you-so"_-looks.

But Jane hadn't been persuaded.

"Lizzie, really, I worry about you...", she'd begun, while great-aunt Alice had explained to her non-existent audience how to correctly put on a gas mask.

"You worry?", Lizzie had cried out, a bitter laugh bubbling up her throat. "Don't be ridiculous, it's way too fucking late for that."

"Lizzie...", her sister had started again. "Lizzie, we all worry. Mum-"

"Mum?", Lizzie had repeated. "Mum worries? About me not having a bloody boyfriend to complete my otherwise unbearably unfulfilled life? Or because I refuse to fucking apologize to him – to apologize to them?"

"Lizzie, you're being ungrateful and that's -"

"Oh really?" She'd been giggling. "Jane, just fucking tell me what I should be grateful for and I'll be it, alright? I always wanted to be an actress, I might as well start now."

"Lizzie..."

"I'm here, okay? You wanted me to come home and I did, so stop making those accusations while I'm going to fill my veins with ethanol of every kind to turn this farce into something even remotely pretty", Lizzie had replied as nonchalant as possible and had risen from her seat on the couch.

"Lizzie, alcohol is no -"

"Oh, Jane, my dear child!", great-aunt Alice had called out, saving Lizzie from her sister's concern in time. "What did your dear mother tell me? Your man left you? Come here, my dear, and tell Aunt Alice your sorrows!" Jane had blinked in horror from her great-aunt to Lizzie. "Take a bit of the eggnog, child. It will help get you back on your feet, I tell you. Alcohol has always been the best-"

"Solution?" Lizzie had been standing at that point, glass and Whiskey-bottle in hand, tilting her head to the side. "I think so, too, Janie-Paney. And on that note I'm going to find myself a more... _secluded_ place." Swaying slightly in a Jack-Sparrow manner, Lizzie had made her way over to the door, glass and bottle like batons in her hands, while great-aunt Alice had tried to lessen Jane's bitter agony.

"My husband, your great-uncle Edwin also had to leave me. Of course that been because of World War II and he didn't left me voluntarily, but -"

"Have fun, you two!", Lizzie had wished them before turning around on the doorstep and curtseying. "And Janie...It's way too late." She'd raised her head, a sardonic smile playing on her lips. "Way too fucking late."

The air smelled like snow, tasted like it.

As a child, life in Meryton had been one big adventure playground.

Everyone had known everyone and there'd been no closed doors, everybody would simply burst into their neighbours' living rooms, invite people to play outside and steal cookies from the Bennet's and Tillinger's kitchens. They'd been one big bunch of children, running around the fields and down the hills around Meryton in the afternoons and holidays, building barriers in rivers and houses in trees, freeing the sheep from the Williams' sheds or playing in the crashing waves even though it had only been early March.

But the absolute highlight of every year had been the first snow in November.

It was an ability every child in Meryton possessed.

To smell snow.

Nobody knew why, but every newborn in this godforsaken town had this ability and as soon as the first ones had put their noses out of their windows in the morning, smelling the nearing snow on their tongues, the news would spread like wildfire. During the whole day there would be this prickling, energizing feeling in the air and the teachers at the local elementary school would sent their pupils home early, where their fathers would already be busy cleaning the grills and positioning them in the driveways, while their mothers would prepare salads, marinate meat and decorate houses with fairy lights and the kids would take out their sleighs and force themselves in their old snow suits from last year.

All in anticipation of the first snow.

Meryton wasn't a bad place to be a child. Lizzie took one last drag from her cigarette before stubbing it out.

But perhaps not the best place to grow up.

After Lizzie had fled from Jane and the rest of her crazy family, she'd suddenly found herself in her father's library and breathing in the scent of old books, candle wax and leather had stitched up her throat once again.

She'd placed her glass and the bottle with a soft "Klong" on one of the shelves, tracing the worn bindings and golden letters and she'd been sure that the soft crackling, she'd felt under her fingertips, hadn't been of her own imagination.

"_Analytic Philosophy of mind_", a voice had suddenly sounded behind her and she'd nearly dropped the book in shock. "A wonderful piece."

She'd turned around, staring at the man with the silver-grey hair and the blinking green eyes behind glasses.

"_Liz-bit_...", the man had said and she'd nodded, _barely_, when the word "Dad" got stuck somewhere in her throat and she couldn't get it out.

"It's interesting", she'd said, averting her eyes to look back at the book's cover. He looked older than she remembered. Smaller.

"You read it?", he'd asked in surprise, stepping closer. She'd backed off, holding the glass with the amber liquid between them like a barrier.

"The Bieri-Trilemma." She'd nodded, swirling around the contents of her glass. "A verbalisation of the body-mind problem in three statements. Forging a bridge from Descartes' classic dualism to epiphenomenalism and back to monism and the identity theory of mind." She'd taken a sip, letting the burning liquid run down her throat. "Solved by the, from general physicalism continued, functionalism." She'd tilted her head to the side, while her father had stared at her with his mouth agape. "Or eliminative materialism. But that's more of an easy way out in my opinion."

"Indeed." He'd come closer, but before she'd been able to back off, he'd passed her, sitting down in his old leather chair. The orange light of the standard lamp next to him had cut the wrinkles in his face even deeper.

He'd been her hero. A long time ago. He'd been her sun, her moon and everything in between. But heroes were meant to fall one day and he'd fallen hard when his time had come.

"And what's your position?", he'd asked, hands folded, watching her over the rim of his glasses.

She'd felt like the Lizzie from the old days and she'd taken another sip from her whiskey. There'd been disapproval in his eyes, but she'd ignored it.

"I don't know", she'd said, staring into the golden liquid like it was some kind of crystal ball and could show her the future.

"You don't know?" He'd sounded happy about it and suddenly there'd been this overwhelming urge to just thrown that half full glass of whiskey in his condescendingly smiling face, watching the shards and the liquid running down his stomach and over his folded hands. "Look, Lizzie, you know that the identity theory of mind -"

"Isn't that the point of philosophy?", she'd asked, twirling the glass in her hands with a thoughtful expression on her face. "That there's not one true answer?"

"You've never been a philosopher", her father had reminded her with a smile and she'd laughed at that.

"No, you're right. I've never been one of those...", she'd said, shaking her head. "Perhaps because I've been too busy having my own opinion." He'd opened his mouth to protest. "Or because I've never shuffled out of responsibility if someone relied on my help."

She'd looked up at him, a bitter smile playing around her lips.

"Elizabeth..." He'd sat up.

"Perhaps because I've never found satisfaction in sitting on the sidelines, watching other people win and lose, thinking it was an amusing pastime." She'd shaken her head, placing the glass back on the shelve. Some of the liquid had splashed over, leaving dark marks on the wood.

"Elizabeth!" His outcry had barely touched her, she'd made her way over to the door, turning around before leaving his cave.

"Happy Christmas, _Daddy_."

Snow began falling. First only few and far between, then more and more thick, white flakes, settling down on her shoulders, dancing in circles on the earth's surface, suffocating the world with soft, cold white. She felt her breath quicken, her heart racing. She'd waited for this snowstorm like she'd waited for the thunderstorms in London.

Snow was rain... but softer.

She'd gone back into the living room, where the whole family had been caught in some kind of giant human ball and Lizzie's alarm bells had all been shrilling loudly.

"Lizzie!", her mother had cried out, stretching out a jewellery clad hand. "Lydia has just told us the most wonderful news!"

She'd raised an eyebrow at that, mentally listing the things, that could sent Mrs Bennet into such fits of excitement. Was Lydia engaged? Pregnant? Secretly married?

The list had been rather short, but before Lizzie had been able to voice one of these options, one half of the bubble-gum-twins had stepped forward, grinning widely.

"I'm going to move to London!", she'd announced and Lizzie had seen red.

Out of the corner of her eyes she'd been able to see Jane's half beaming, half worried face, had heard Mama Bennet squealing in delight that her precious, little Lydia would be married before the year was out, but then the door had fallen shut and she'd opted for flight.

And with that her odyssey had begun.

The first evening she'd been walking for hours through the cold until the alcohol had worked itself through her veins and she'd suddenly noticed that she'd been staring at the menacing stone façade of the church's steeple for over twenty minutes.

The damn bird had still been singing.

The next morning she'd taken the old Ford, which had still been waiting for her in the Bennet's garage. It had been her car from when she'd still been innocent.

It still smelled like before , like old cushions, summer and sunscreen, tasted like skin and wandering, searching fingers over fabric.

She'd driven till the outskirts of town and beyond, had driven loops around town, wishing that she could go farther than the horizon. She'd finally stopped at the cliff, turned up the volume to blare music at full volume and opened the small package of weed, she'd stolen from Craig.

When she'd been high and had seen colourful patterns on the crashing waves, she'd been able to breathe for the first time in days.

The munchies had driven her back into town and into Mr Lewis' kiosk, which was the only open shop during the holidays and she'd felt them staring at her, shooting daggers at her back. Disapproval, disdain... She'd heard the words they were muttering on the quiet. _Slut_, they'd said. _Whore_. The whispers had died down when she'd face them directly, but it had flared up again every fucking time she'd turned away.

Out of pure spite she'd bought three packets of Marlboros just to see the disapproval in Mr Lewis' eyes.

She'd nearly done the same at the local drug store, but she'd had no idea what she to do with a package full of condoms and lube in bumblefuck Meryton and she'd had no desire to find out.

She'd left the store without even buying something, be it condoms or tampons, but still this one word on people's tongues had followed her like the furies the patricide.

_Murderer..._

The snow had become thicker, was now blowing in solid columns over the cliffs and the ocean. She was freezing and she wished, she could call Anne, but the ambergirl spent the holidays with Wentworth and the Grovelands at Lyme, where Mus had forbidden any use of mobile-phones to the twins' utter dismay.

And yet, she didn't even know what she wanted to tell her. "Hello" perhaps, or just "Hi". Perhaps she would make a joke, hear Anne laugh and then she'd feel a teeny tiny bit better. She would tell her about the weather, the cliffs and smelling snow, saying, that her family wasn't her own anymore, that her mother and sisters put Christmas bulbs in their hair and cleavages, that her Dad was a smug asshole and that Jane had turned into a robot. She wanted to tell her about great-aunt Alice and gas masks and ask her somewhere in between how it could be that she was falling apart on the inside when she was holding on so tightly it physically hurt.

She wiped the snow off her shoulders and knees, scrambling back into the driver's cabin. The air in the car was cold and smelled like snow. She could see her breath in front of her face when she started the motor, illuminating the dancing snowflakes when switching on the headlights.

Anne wasn't available, much like the Grovelands, Craig was in Ireland with his family and Charlotte... Lizzie wasn't sure if she was in the right mind to deal with Charlotte right now.

The snow storm grew stronger and she ignored the man in the radio, who wished everybody a Happy Christmas, while the old Ford worked itself through the hills.

She ended up in front of his house. In the middle of a snowstorm and with a radio blaring Whams "Last Christmas", while she stared at the illuminated windows of the old manor house.

She wanted to call Anne. Tell her that she was here and not lying curled up on the floor. That the house still looked the same and that over there, in the bark of that oak tree on the right behind the arcade, her initials were carved.

Sometimes Lizzie wondered, if memories belonged in fact to the persons, who experienced them and not to the places, where they happened. Perhaps the pictures, people carried in their heads, where only photographic negatives, copies, prints of the original. Perhaps the memory of a summer evening belonged in fact to the tree you sat under, to the lake you bathed, the houses you lived in. Perhaps they were as fugacious as a dragonfly in summer, as the insect biting you, as ephemeral as snow in winter and as outlasting as the old oak tree behind the arcade.

The flakes were still dancing, when she finally entered the Bennet's driveway, after it had taken a small eternity until she'd been able to turn around the ignition key, wiping the snow from the windscreen in freeing gesture.

Jane and one of those lonely letters (Lizzie believed it was Lydia, but it was hard to differentiate between the two with the amount of make-up on the girl's face) were already waiting for her.

"We're going out, bitches!", the letter announced, jumping up and down like a maniac. "It's Christmas Happy Hour at _Ben&amp;Jerry's _and we're all going!"

Lizzie, who the news about Lydia's move to London still didn't particularly please, simply stared at her sister darkly. "Over my dead body", she spit out.

"Oh, Lizzie, don't be like that!", Lydia cried out. "Are you such a killjoy in London, too? Look, even Mary's coming!"

Lizzie gazed at Jane, who smiled at her hopefully. "Forget it."

"But, Lizzie...", her older sister chimed in, but Lydia cut her off rather harshly.

"If you don't come with us, I'll tell Mum and you can spend the evening with her in the Tilinger's kitchen. Do you like that better?"

Lizzie stared at her sister, whose lips contorted into a decidedly smug smile.

"Fine", she grunted annoyed, marching past her two sisters and up the stairs towards Jane's old room, where she was sleeping these days, because she couldn't bear being alone in her old room.

It gave her nightmares.

"And I'll choose your clothes!", Lydia called after. "We don't want people think you're some kind of creepy emo girl, got that?"

And so it happened that just an hour later Lizzie Bennet found herself in a glitter-top, tight jeans and stilettos in the middle of a seedy Pub, which was posing as Meryton's hotspot.

It was the only Pub within a ten-mile radius, too.

The name _Ben&amp;Jerry_ came from the Pub's owners, a father and son duo, but neither Ben nor Jerry had ever understood the joke when she'd ask them about ice-cream flavours.

Lydia had forbidden her to wear her coat inside the Pub (she'd also forced her to wear make-up and do other unmentionable things) and Lizzie felt strangely uncomfortable and naked with her bare arms, only covered by a myriad of dangling bracelets, in the dusky light of the establishment.

It wasn't as bad as she'd expected it would be. Well, most people looked at her like she was Godzilla and the devil in one person, but she'd also met a few old friends from school, who where studying in Leeds and Manchester (and therefore the ones, who were stretching the ties binding them to their home-town the most with the exception of Lizzie). They talked about school and the cities they were living in, about studying and the faculties' parties, avoiding any talk about Meryton and the time five years ago.

She should have known it wouldn't last.

It happened around eleven. While Lydia was dancing on table tops in her tight sequin-skirt, Kitty wasn't able to breathe due to her constant giggling and Mary was singing "Glory Hallelujah" with bright red cheeks, Lizzie made her way over to the bar to order another round of drinks for their table, when someone suddenly collided with her sideways.

"Shit!", it escaped Lizzie, when the impact force of the collision knocked over some of the glasses, spilling their contents on the floor and on their shoes. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"Oh, my apologies!", the voice of the collision's opponent cried out. "I'm so sorry! Honestly, I didn't see anyone behind me and -" The voice halted, sharply breathing in.

"Lizzie?", the voice asked, softly and hesitantly and Lizzie looked up from the shards of glass on the grimy floor, staring directly in a pale freckled face framed by strands of dark red hair. Blue eyes, clear like two mountain lakes, widened.

"Lizzie, is that you?", the girl in the expensive, pale grey coat asked, stretching out one delicate hand. Cautiously, as if she was afraid Lizzie would disappear upon contact.

"Florence", Lizzie whispered, barely audible, staring at the girl with whom she'd freed sheep from the Williams family's sheds, drowned grandmother Tillingers underwear and until five years ago had spent every waking moment with since the tender age of eight months.

"Oh Lizzie!", she cried out and before she knew what was happening, the stranger was hugging her tightly. "Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!"

She was standing there, frozen to the spot, enduring whatever this was. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jane and the happy tears glistening in her sister's eyes.

"Oh, I'm so happy to see you!", Florence cried out. "It's been way too long! Is it true, that you're living in London? I wanted to visit you, but Mattie said that wouldn't be such a great idea and -"

"Florence, what are you doing here?", Lizzie asked, when she'd finally found her voice again.

"What I'm doing here?", the redhead asked, clapping her hands in glee. "It's Christmas! What do you think? Mummy and Daddy are leaving for the West-Indies first thing tomorrow and we have the place all to ourselves. I want to throw a party, but Mattie said -"

"Mattie?" Lizzie's voice shrilled at the word and it felt like it was cutting her throat open alive. "Your brother is here?"

Florence looked at her, bewildered and amused at the same time. "Of course he is, Lizzie." She giggled. "We're Cavanaughs. You know Daddy, silly, the family always spends Christmas together at home."

"But Jane said -"

"I don't know, what Jane said." The redhead smiled. "I met her just a few days ago and she told me that the whole Bennet family regularly spends Christmas holidays together, too."

Lizzie's muscles tensed. "This is the first time I'm back", she said, her voice strained and Florence paled considerably.

"I see..", she whispered and Lizzie saw Jane's hopeful smile somewhere in the background again, making her throat feel constricted.

But then Florence started grinning again. "We absolutely have to meet up sometime! And you have to come to my party, okay? I'm sure my brother desperately wants to talk to you and -"

The rest of the sentence got lost in the droning in Lizzie's ears, in the rush of blood to the head, surging, scalding hot, through her veins, burning everything in its wake.

Florence suddenly started bouncing, tugging on Lizzie's sleeve. "Come here, come here, come here!", she cried out in one big mumbo-jumbo of words, laughs and the blinking lights over the bar, dragging Lizzie over to the door, where a figure in a dark coat had just entered the Pub.

She saw Jane rushing towards her, Florence jumping up and down in excitement. The figure pulled his snow covered beanie from his head, running a hand through the blonde, tousled hair, gazing at his sister with a crooked smile. Bright blue eyes, as clear as two mountain lakes.

She remembered sunscreen, ice-cream on her tongue and kisses tasting like lip balm and snow in winter, his lips, ghosting over her naked body, circling her navel while there was a storm raging outside with rain crackling against the window panes like nervous fingers stirring their ecstasy.

There was the knife, with which he carved their initials into the oak tree next to his house and the shivers running down her spine every single time he was near her.

She remembered the scent of smoke and bonfires, people laughing at every corner, the burning of skin and the wretched _pounding, pounding, pounding_...

His eyes found hers, widened when he did and with a screeching noise the droning, the rush of blood stopped, leaving her behind in sobering numbness.

"_Dorrie_...", he whispered, taking a step forward, while everybody's eyes were glued to them. "My Dorrie..."

With a loud bang the tray, Lizzie had held in her hands, fell shattering to the floor. Glass burst, beer leaked – Lizzie didn't even bat an eyelash, just stared straight ahead into the bright blue eyes of the boy with the crooked smile.

"_Matthew_..."

* * *

Three hours later Lizzie Bennet stuffed everything she'd brought here into her old military backpack, throwing on her coat, before stomping down the staircase and out into the open.

"Where do you think you're going?", a voice called after her and Lizzie recognized too late that it was Jane.

She turned around. "Away", she simply said, opening the passenger's door of her old Ford to store her backpack there.

"What do you mean "away"?" Jane was wearing pyjamas, had only thrown on a coat and put on some slippers. Her face was pale, her eyes huge. "Where do you want to go? It's two in the morning?"

Lizzie didn't answer her, she simply continued wiping snow from the car's windows.

"Lizzie, you can't go now!"

No answer.

"Elizabeth Theodora Bennet!", Jane cried out, angry and in panic. "What in god's good name has gotten into -"

"Nothing", Lizzie replied cryptically. "I just want to get away."

"But you can't go! It's _Christmas_!"

"I don't give a shit", Lizzie snorted, wiping the snow from the car roof.

"Lizzie, come back into the house. It's freezing and tomorrow's Christmas day -

"What do you want, Jane?", Lizzie asked just as angrily, looking up. Her green eyes seemed to glow manically even in the sparse light from the hallway lamp. "You got your Christmas holidays, didn't you? Your _perfect_ Christmas with your _perfect_ family, who're all a bunch of bloody lunatics. Isn't that what you wanted? Playing fucking Stepford? Are you happy now, goddamit?!"

With every outburst she'd wiped another row of snow from her car and was now standing there in front of Jane, panting, with hands like icicles.

"Lizzie, everything went well. What's your problem?", she asked irritated, wrapping her coat tighter around her small frame. "When did you come home anyway? I didn't hear -"

"What my problem is?" She let out a bitter laugh. "I mean... Who fucking cares? Not you, not Mum and sure as fuck not the rest of this bloody hell hole!"

"Lizzie!"

"What?", she called out. "Isn't that the truth? You're so blinded by your happiness of seeing your broken family reunited that you don't see how it's rubbing and crumbling at every corner!"

"Lizzie, that's not fair!", Jane chided her, her jaw a hard line.

"Not fair? Do you want me to tell you what's not bloody fair?", Lizzie laughed out, throwing snow in the air. "That you forced me to come here and spend Christmas with people I didn't want to see again for the rest of my fucking life, _that's_ not fair!"

"You wanted to spend them with those... _Grovelands_", Jane spit out, curling her hands into fists. "People, who're not your own flesh and blood!"

"They're a thousands times more the family than this bunch of egoistical imbeciles in there!", Lizzie cried out pointing at the old Bennet residence with the asymmetric gables.

Jane flinched as if someone had hit her. "It's not fair", she whispered again. "It's not fair that you're blaming us for what happened back then. It's not fair that you're excluding us from your life only because you can't forgive."

Lizzie shook her head, laughing bitterly. "You don't get it, do you? I'm not blaming you for all that shit from five years ago." She banged her fist against the car roof. "This woman up there... _Mum_... She didn't notice anything. I walked around wearing _sun glasses_ for two weeks straight in fucking _January_ and she didn't make a sound!"

"She doesn't mean to -"

Lizzie interrupted her again. "And that other guy? He only wants to get back his _genius _child", she said it with obvious derision. "The girl, who worshipped the bloody ground he walked on and who he could tell all about philosophy without letting her think for herself. Without fucking caring for her when she needed a hero the most."

"And what about me?", Jane asked, her eyes round and glistening with tears. "What did I do?"

But Lizzie just shook her head, waving it aside while working on the rear window.

"Lizzie..."

"Jane, leave it."

"Lizzie, tell me. What kind of horrible thing are accusing me off, that you can't even forgive your own sister?"

Lizzie didn't look up, but her hands were trembling, when her sister stepped closer. The snow scrunched under her feet.

"Lizzie..."

"You weren't there!", she then cried out, her voice raw and sore with tears on the edges, whirling around to face her sister. "_You weren't bloody there_!"

"But what -"  
"_You weren't there_!", she yelled, hoarsely and angrily with glowing, burning eyes, which felt like they were jumping out of her head.

The lights on the first floor were suddenly switched on.

Jane backed off. "You hate me, because I wasn't there? Lizzie, how am I to -"

"I don't hate you!", Lizzie shouted, still choking on this clusterfuck of raging and fighting emotions. "The only reason I'm still talking to you and only you is because_ you weren't there_!"  
"But why -"

"But that changed today, understood?" She wiped the last of the snow from the windows and sniffled. "You knew that Florence and Matthew are in town." She nearly choked on the name. "You knew they would be at _Ben&amp;Jerry's_ today. And you didn't tell me, because you knew bloody well that I wouldn't so much as set foot in this town if I hadn't been persuaded that they were far way, drunk on cocktails somewhere on the bloody Bahamas. You knew it so fucking well!"

"I just wanted to -"

"You just wanted to celebrate your _perfect_ Christmas, reunite your _perfect_ family, conjure up my _perfect_ ex-boyfriend so that it could be your _perfect_ little village again!"

There was some pattering of feet on the stairs and Lizzie could hear Lydia complaining about something or other.

"And I can understand your desire for something _perfect_, your wish to repair something after Mr. Fucking Perfect just left you, but I'm done here", she announced, opening the driver's door ready to climb in, when Jane held her back, clutching her arm so tightly it hurt.

"Don't you dare!", her sister hissed and her beautiful features contorted in fury and panic. "Don't you dare and just drive away! You've been here mere days and you've done nothing but driving around in that pile of junk and getting high. Don't you think I didn't notice your bloodshot eyes or the smell of cigarettes on your clothes? You didn't even try! You didn't talk to them, not to Mum and not to Dad. Damn, the only person you've talking to is great-aunt Alice and she's shouting for gas masks every three minutes! So no, you didn't try and it's not bloody-"

"Lizzie?", a voice sounded from the doorstep and both sisters looked up. "Lizzie, child, what are you doing?", her mother squeaked, standing there in her nightgown together with Lydia and her father on the doorstep.

"Liz-bit, what... What is that supposed to -", her father asked next, while Lydia just rubbed her eyes tiredly.

Lizzie looked at Jane. "I'm done here", she hissed, ripping her arm out of Jane's grasp. "Stay here, be happy. But be careful that she won't exchange _your_ birth control pills for harmless little Tic Tacs, too." She climbed into the car, turning the ignition key. "I'm out of here", she hissed, slamming the door shut with a loud bang before swiftly driving backwards out of the driveway.

"Lizziiiiieeee!", she heard her mother's drawn out scream and when looking into the rear-view mirror there was another, flittering figure running and chasing besides Jane after her car.

But she didn't stop. Instead she speeded over snow-covered streets, her insides a furious, hollering mess and it was more than just a small miracle that she reached the train station in Lancaster unscathed.

Two hours later she was sitting in a train.

* * *

**A/N: Not what you were expecting, right? *Hides behind laptop* I hope this wasn't too confusing, tenses are a bitch.  
**

**Anyway, I think this story will take up to forty chapters to finish, the Rosings arc should take up to five chapters? I'm not sure, this story has a way of solving itself when it wants to, not a moment sooner. I have an outline, but no idea what will happen, when Colonel Fitzwilliam shows up;) **

**If you want to have an idea how our dear couple will meet again... go back a few chapters and reread what Collins is rambling. I took the freedom to do it like Austen and let rather ridiculous characters say the most important things with no one noticing. So perhaps... pay attention to what they're saying from time to time. **

**Anyway, leave them reviews! I looove them;) SERIOUSLY! And I appreciate each and every one, really I read them to pieces;) **


	21. Chapter 20 How to count Silence

**A/N: Hey people! Thanks a lot for last chapter's reception, you all really made my day:) We're doing the changed POV this time, let's see how our dear amber girl spent her Christmas:) As a warning: Anne thinks differently than Lizzie does, she jumps between times, thinks, feels, acts differently and I _hope_ that it's not too confusing... We're getting a bit into her past, you know?**

**Attention: Due to dark themes in this story I can no longer bear the responsibility of letting this fic's rating be a T. Therefore the rating will change after the next chapter. Please be aware of that and change your filters so you'll get the updates or follow this story. **

**Soundtrack:**

**The Garden Rules - Snow Patrol**

**What's in a Name - The Airborne Toxic Event**

**Safe - **The Airborne Toxic Event****

**True Love - **The Airborne Toxic Event****

**Nine Crimes - Damien Rice **

**Disclaimer: I love this Anne. I own her golden eyes, no matter how creepy that may sound...**

* * *

**Chapter 20: How to count silence  
**

* * *

There are three virtues in this world in order to make peace with yourself.

* * *

_**Forgiveness**_

_Noun – 1. _act of forgiving; state of being forgiven.

2\. disposition or willingness to forgive

Synonyms: amnesty, absolution, purgation

* * *

_The first time she kissed Wentworth had been one chilly, foggy Sunday morning in September. _

_She smelled like smoke, blowing it through the gap between her front teeth while gesticulating wildly with her cigarette, her pale face flushed, her dark eyes heated, talking about going away like it was an abstract philosophy and a well thought-out plan at the same time._

_Anne didn't know what made her take that one step forward and cut her short right in the middle of her tirade about the bigotry of small-towns – perhaps it was the contrast of black hair, pale skin and the red-orange glow of the leaves in the background, perhaps even the scent of cigarettes, the way her eyes lit up and how that picture of her in that oversized, black leather jacket tore her ribcage in two – she didn't know. _

_She stepped forward, pressed her own, slightly chapped lips against hers, tasted smoke and mint and everything in between._

* * *

Lyme in winter was like an old song.

A wistful, oddly familiar melody, that came from the waves, drifted though quay walls, got tangled up in the little city's shutters and lamp posts and even repeated itself in the creaking floor boards of the small cottage on the hill until it finally came from Anne's own lips, was _whispered, breathed, sung_. A ghost in the fog, enveloping Lyme the morning of their arrival, a lost figure in the white haze, promising solitude as far as the eye could see.

The melody struck a chord somewhere inside her.

She wrapped her scarf even more tightly around her neck, while standing at the gate, looking up to the small, white house, which had been her refuge ten years ago.

"Come on!", Henry Groveland cried out, nearly knocking down Anne while racing up the driveway to the house, his arms wrapped around a bunch of suspiciously looking, colourful boxes, followed only by seconds by his twin brother Liam and the Groveland's poodle, who wore a Santa hat. "Let's look if our terrariums are still in our rooms!"

"And we have to set up our laboratory!", the other blonde devil rushed to say and then there was only the patter of feet and their constant screaming to be heard, while they carried their utensils up the stairs.

"Don't forget the Bunsen burners and -"

"Do you have everything ready, so that we -" A clattering sound and the shutting of a door interrupted them.

"Are they always this way?", Wentworth asked, suddenly appearing out of the fog besides Anne, a small figure with shiny, black hair and flushed cheeks, but before Anne was able to calm her erratic heartbeat and give her an actual answer, Lou, who'd piled her strawberry blond hair in a messy bun on top of her head, pushed between them.

"Mostly", she replied. "Sophie tried to get them on ritalin once, but that didn't really work. Now they try the occupational therapy thing, that's the reason for all these..." She gestured vaguely towards that hotchpotch of phials, jars and bottles laying by the wayside, while she dragged her oversized suitcase over the stony path. Hetty was still occupied with getting her own suitcase out of the car boot of the acidic yellow transporter, which Mus had leased for the holidays.

Wentworth began to say something, but she was interrupted by the devil twins.

"Why is it already blue? Liam, you said that it shouldn't -" Henry's rather panicked voice sounded from the open window on the top floor.

"Blue?! It's already blue? Henry, you have to -" They heard some rumbling and saw one blonde head of hair for a second.

"Where? Where should I put it?", Henry yelled and Wentworth darted about like mad, only to find the other's rather amused looking faces appearing in the white fog.

"Shouldn't someone do something?", she asked, her hand pointing at the window, lost somewhere in the cold air.

"Oh, let the children -", Mus began, unloading bag after bag from the car.

"- they're just playing", Sophie chimed in and winked. "They don't bite."

"Out of the window! Throw it out of the window!", Liam cried out in terror and again there was some rumbling and clattering to be heard.

"But they try", Lou grunted. "Honestly, Sophie, what did you do during your pregnancy? Took up snorting coke?"

"I took care of you two", Sophie countered and winked again. Anne smiled, wrapping her colourful, wildly patterned scarf more tightly around her neck. Lizzie had said that the pattern was giving her a headache. _And_ reminded her of the Jamaican guy's sweatshirts in "Cool Runnings".

But that girl was crazy either way.

"I can't get it open, Liam, help me, I can't open it!", Henry's panicked voice sounded again.

"There's the window!", Liam screeched. "Throw it out!"

"But there are Mum and Dad!"

"Geez, and what about us?", Hetty, who'd finally managed to get her suitcase out of the car, revolted. "Grilled cheese on toast?"  
"No, because they'd love you if you were", Mus replied with a chuckle and the grown up twins were pouting.

"We're going to die! Mummy, we're going to die!", the devil twins were screaming from above and Sophie sighed. "Always so dramatic", she muttered with a quiet chuckle and shook her head, while Wentworth just looked from one to the other in horror.

Something smashed, then there was a cry and the shattering of glass before silence took over. Everybody stared at the open window.

"It's purple", the rather contrite voice of Henry Groveland sounded and one blonde head of hair appeared in the window, followed by the other twin, both faces covered in grime.

Everybody except Wentworth started laughing and the sound reverberated in the crisp, foggy winter morning.

"You'll both wash your hands and faces before you get anywhere near the kitchen!", Sophie called out, making her way up to the house.

"But, Mum -"

"Mum, that's not -"

"That's absolutely unfair!", they both protested, but Sophie only cast them one menacing glare and both heads disappeared like they were starring in a puppet theatre.

"That's not fair", one of them could be heard murmuring before the door shut and everything was silent again.

"May I present?", Hetty asked, now standing next to Lou in the driveway, both with their oversized suitcases in hand and bowed.

"That was -", Lou chimed and curtseyed, both smiling widely at Wentworth.  
"The diabolic duo!", Hetty cried out.

"At their best", her sister added and both were grinning from ear to ear.

Mus laughed quietly behind them. "In my opinion, there's more than one diabolic duo here", he remarked, making Anne, who was still, half forgotten, standing at the gate in the white, hazy fog, laugh in sudden delight.

Wentworth shot her a surprised glance, looking like she was about to say something, before she decided differently and marched up the driveway behind Lou and Hetty.

Anne sighed, closing her eyes, which seemed to burn after that chaotic drive with Fritzchen, the poodle, on her lap.

"Don't worry", Mus' voice sounded from behind and she heard him closing the car boot with a thud. "She'll come around, girl."

Her lips contorted into a small, sad smile, which didn't reach her eyes and she shook her head.

"Hope will bring down even the strongest of men, Mus", she whispered. "Don't torture me."

"No", the little man with the moustache and the sparkling blue eyes grumbled. "You force yourself through Purgatory right on your own."

Anne laughed bitterly. "You're mistaken. They always reserved the ninth circle of hell for traitors", she replied. "Right next to the devil and his three heads."

Mus shut the last car door with a loud thud and lifted another box of groceries. "Pessimism never suited you, Annie", he said, squeezing her shoulder. "And neither does bitterness."

Anne smiled slightly, looking up at the house. "It's strange to be here", she muttered, burying her hands deeper in her coat. "Without Lizzie."

He nodded, gazing in the same direction. "Triggers memories, doesn't it?"

"That's not the only thing." She stared into the fog, trying to make out something in the haze. "I'm just worrying."

"It's time", he said confidently. "And she's strong."

She closed her eyes, curling her hands into fists. "But she won't be a day older than seventeen if she goes back there. Barely more than a child hiding under the blankets at night."

"Seventeen is not a bad age per se", Mus replied. "You don't make the worst decisions at that age."

Anne sighed, breathed in and out, tried to breathe out all the pain, the worry, the anxiety and hide it in the fog. "But also not the best."

He laughed. "You don't have to tell me, girl. I met Mary at that age." He laughed and patted her shoulder. "She'll make it, darling", he muttered. "And if not..." A chuckle and a sly grin. "Well, there's always the ticket I hid in her backpack. She'll find us, Annie."

She smiled, blinking away the tears. "Thanks, Mus. I owe you."

He laughed, loudly and deeply. "No, you don't. It's Christmas, of course I want to have my family around and if that means hiding tickets in my stubborn, lost daughter's backpack, then I will bloody well do it."

Anne giggled, hiding only a few tears in her voice. "She really is a stubborn one, isn't she?"

"As a mule", he replied, bestowing his typical warm, slightly crooked smile upon her. "She learned from the best."

She laughed. "Believe me, she was that way long before I met her", she replied, but Mus just shook his head gently and made his way up to the house.

"Don't stay out too long, princess", he called. "Sophie has cookies waiting for us and you know how scary she can be."

Anne just smiled, staring at the small, brightly illuminated house where the twins' screaming and shouting voices could be heard. They were demanding more cookies and the devil twins on a sugar high were scary.

"You're missing, Lizzie", she whispered, before she slowly, step by step, took the same way she'd taken almost ten years ago when she'd been seventeen.

Forgiveness...

* * *

_It was her sixteenth birthday when she met Wentworth for the first time._

_It had been a hot and humid summer day in Kent and the pink taffeta gown, her mother had forced her to wear, was itching and poking in all the wrong places, not to mention the corset, she had to wear underneath._

_Her mother reminded her to sit still, bolt-upright, like it was proper for young ladies of her class. _

"_Grace", she said. "More grace, child. You're slouching!"_

_The air in the parlour was stifling and she was sitting on the edge of the cushioned chair, her legs parallel and slightly cocked, counting the movements of her mother's fan, while one, single drop of sweat trickled down her forehead. _

_They were waiting for a friend of her mother, who'd announced to bring her grand-daughter with her, to celebrate Anne's birthday._

_She'd been warned. "The girl is a bastard", her mother had said, waving her fan like a sceptre. "And I only allow her here because of Augusta." Her head had bobbed up and down like a marionette, her eyes glassy and she'd been able to smell the scent of sherry wafting around in the humid air. _

"_Bastard", her mother had muttered over and over again until finally one of the servants knocked on the door to announce their visitors. "Damn bastard", she said one more time before raising her head to greet her friend. _

_Augusta Fairfax could have been her mother's twin. She was just as loud, just as harsh and critical, with eyes in slits and enough perfume and powder to cover up the biting scent of alcohol. _

_She was in the process of losing herself in her trance, to descend the stairs of her conscience until she reached that point, where she felt nothing but peace and quiet, when her eyes suddenly fell on the dark haired girl next to the old lady and she breathed in sharply while her entire world focus slowly began to shift. _

_She was different and it was hard to describe why. _

_It weren't the clothes, she wore almost the same ensemble Anne did, a stiff, shiny gown, gloves, sandals with low heels – She saw the lines of her corset under the fabric of her dress._

_But something about her made her stand out like a blazing flame in a multitude of flickering candles. _

_Perhaps it was the irony with which she wore her dress, the sarcastic laugh around the corners of her mouth. _

_Perhaps it even were the two black lines, peeking out from under the pale blue glove, playing a trick on her flawless ivory skin._

_Anne couldn't take her eyes off her, no matter how many times her mother cleared her throat in disapproval. The black iris' of that girl were like magnets and she felt the prickling in her limbs as if for the first time in a very long time blood was flowing in her veins again._

_Alive..._

* * *

"How did Lizzie became part of your group?"

Wentworth's question, which could be heard clearly through the thin walls of the house, ripped Anne abruptly out of her memories and it took a while until her breathing had calmed down enough.

She wrapped the blanket even more tightly around her body, pressing her knees against her chest while she sat there on the window sill, staring at the ocean, which she could barely make out in the black of the night, a flickering candle beside her.

It was their first evening here and after the younger twins had been chained to their respective beds, Anne had retreated to her own room to sort out her thoughts, which were acting like a bunch of bratty school children.

This place elicited memories, hunted, chased her with them as if the pictures were carved into the damn lines of the wood, like furrows in a record, turning and turning, telling the same story over and over again.

She'd recorded it herself, had immortalised it during her endless ambulations in this house on every piece of wallpaper and now alone in this room she could do nothing more than disappear, go back or listen to the conversation on the other side of the wall, where the twins and Wentworth had their room.

"Oh, that's a good story!", Hetty cried out and giggled. "Anne picked her up at the train station."

"At the train station?" Wentworth sounded horrified. "Was she homeless?"

"Homeless?", Lou repeated, laughing loudly. "One could say so , she -"

"- ran away from home", Hetty finished her sentence. "That's sooo romantic!"

"It's pretty fucking dangerous", Wentworth replied and Anne was close to laughing hysterically, because it had been Wentworth, who'd gone to Manchester with a suitcase and a bunch of phone numbers all those years ago, because London had been too close to Kent for her.

"Whatever", Lou waved it aside. "Anne picked her up, gave her a new hair cut -"

"And a new hair colour", Hetty chimed in. "Daddy said, they were pink."

"And sent her to Africa", Lou finished her story a bit indignantly. "Where she met our Dad."

"Technically they met before they even went to Kenya", Hetty interrupted her again and Anne could practically hear Lou rolling her eyes in annoyance.

"Whatever, she's our sister", she grunted and the squeaking of the old King sized bed could be heard. "Even though she's a grinch, because she's not here."

Anne sighed, pressing her forehead against the cold window pane. It physically hurt knowing that Lizzie was 280 miles up north and wouldn't be here for Christmas.

It wasn't right, wasn't good, it made her fingers itch and let anxiety crawl up her spine. She couldn't stand knowing that her friend was hurting and she couldn't do anything about it.

But Lizzie didn't want to be saved.

"And why isn't she here?" Wentworth had a lot of questions and if Lizzie were here, she would call her a snooper and ask if she was perhaps sexually frustrated, judging from the fact that she spent her time putting her nose in other people's affairs, all the while smiling amusedly and tilting her head to the side as if to get a better look at her opponent.

But Lizzie wasn't here.

"The White Witch has kidnapped and dragged her up north", Lou said in spite of an explanation. "She lured her with Turkish Delight and threw her into the dungeons."

"Narnia? Really, Lou?", Hetty asked. "Did you drank too much wine?"

A dull thud and Anne suspected that a pillow had changed its owner.

"Outch!", Lou complained immediately. "What was that? All I said, was that it's not right that Lizzie's not with her family for Christmas!"

"But she _is_ with her family", Wentworth insisted and Anne's chest tightened painfully, because it was so typical for her to miss the forest for the trees, to be so bloody rational that she wouldn't look under the surface and understand that under it all they all consisted of nothing but blood, skin and bones... that they were all fallible.

"We are her family!", Lou immediately cried out angrily and Anne heard the squeaking of the bed and then the loud bang when the door fell shut.

Silence, only the quiet pounding of her heart was audible and it surprised Anne every time how unimpressed the body was by all those great and small tragedies in life, how it simply marched on, a reliable, ticking clockwork, carrying you through the highs and lows and making all these little dramas seem unimportant and trivial.

She had survived, too, had dragged herself through this house, through the nights, the guilt, the nightmares until she'd woken up one morning on the kitchen floor and realized that her heart was still beating despite it all.

"She's not happy that Lizzie's not here", Hetty said into the silence at some point. "She's family."

"But -", Wentworth began, but the rather shy half of the older Groveland twin set interrupted her.

"Anne says that blood doesn't say much about family ties", she explained. "Genetics has nothing to do with feelings."

"Oh really?", Wentworth asked and Anne knew, she wasn't just imagining the sarcasm in her voice. "Does she now?"

"Yes", Hetty replied, not noticing the derision in that statement. "She told us over and over again, when we asked her about our Mum and then later when Daddy married Sophie."

Mary, the twins' mother, had left the family when the twins had barely been four years old only to show up periodically to demand money for this and that wonder drug. Every departure had disturbed the girls greatly and it had only gotten better when Sophie had come into their lives about eight years ago.

"How... _nice_", Anne heard Wentworth say and she wished she could go over to her, tell her that bitterness was poison for the soul, that she should just let out her anger on her and not act so passive aggressive towards the twins.

Her mother had always done that when she wanted Mus to give her more money; she'd manipulated them until they'd begged their Daddy in her stead.

It was downright ironic that Wentworth now did the same.

But that was fate.

She didn't know if she wanted to call it Karma, she didn't like using religious terminology, to her they were so worn-out, misused, so adorned with wrong connotations that it threatened to make her sick.

She could barely utter the word "soul", because it reminded her too much of her mother's religious doctrines.

The threats of purgatory, the eternal anguish of mind had been the nightmares of her childhood and they'd been painted in painstaking detail on the ceiling of her room.

She shivered when Wentworth's voice reached her ear again.

"Surprising, I'd say. A few years ago she'd answered the question quite differently."

* * *

_They were sitting opposite to each other during the concluding dinner in the grand dining room and while her mother was extolling virtues, her daughter did in fact not possess, and Augusta was doing the same with her own grand-daughter, who her mother regarded with nothing more than a derisive sneer paired with a scandalized "Miss Fairfax!" when she reached for the wine carafe. _

_Anne caught the dark haired girl's eye. She'd arched one perfect eyebrow, a grin on her lips and Anne felt her heart beating faster. _

"_And Anne is such a gifted musician!", her mother cried out at that moment, taking another sip of her wine. "She would have been a great virtuoso for sure if her health had allowed it!" _

_The dark haired girl tilted her head to the side, gazing at her questioningly and Anne didn't know what possessed her – perhaps the devil her mother was always talking about – but she shook her head, quickly and quietly, at her mother's words._

_The strange girl grinned and it lit up her whole face._

"_Grandmother, is it possible to visit the gardens?", she asked her grandmother, who was engrossed in a conversation with Anne's mother. The old lady looked questioningly at their hostess and she nodded, happy to get the bastard-child out of her halls. _

"_Take Anne with you", she advised her. "She can show you all the sights." She gave her daughter a stern glance and told her to take her parasol with her. _

_Anne didn't know what happened to her. One moment she was sitting at the oversized dining table in the stifling dining room, painted in depressing dark colours with her mother and in the next she was wandering through the garden under the blazing August sun with the strange girl next to her. _

"_They're excruciating, aren't they?", the girl asked her and shot her a glance. Anne blinked, turning the handle of her parasol nervously in her hand. _

"_They are old", she said quietly. Strands of hair, that had escaped from her hairdo, were sticking to her neck. "And they're family. Flesh and blood."_

"_Do you think that justifies their behaviour?", she asked and Anne could hear the sarcasm in her voice. _

"_Is that important?", Anne asked, she'd never met someone, who dared to question her mother or any one else and it made her nervous. _

"_It's essential", the strange girl replied and grinned. _

"_Miss Fairfax -" , she began, but she was interrupted. _

"_Wentworth", the girl said. _

"_Wentworth?", Anne asked confused. "But that's a man's name."_

"_It's my name", the girl, Wentworth, replied with a strange mix of arrogance and pride. "Do you have a problem with that?"_

"_N-No", Anne mumbled. "But you're a girl."_

_Wentworth smiled, a wide, beaming smile. "You got it", she said, before she started rummaging around in her small purse. "I need a cigarette", she announced, sticking it between her lips. "Do you have a lighter?"_

_Anne just stared at her with big, amber eyes, which were trying to capture this strange creature before her. _

"_Like I thought", Wentworth sighed, putting her cigarettes back into her purse. "Catholic, right?"_

_Anne's mouth popped open and she wanted to ask her if she knew, what the punishment for heresy was, but Wentworth didn't let her, instead she marched down the path leading down to the lake. _

"_Come with me!", she called and the laugh she let out at that made her palms tingle. She could nearly taste the water of the lake in the burning heat and the cool breeze kissing her skin made her sigh._

"_What are you doing?", she asked a bit perplexed, when Wentworth began pulling out hairpins from her bun. _

"_What does it look like?", Wentworth asked, unbuttoning her dress. _

"_But – But that's not proper!", Anne cried out in panic while watching the shiny material falling from her shoulders and the gleaming sunlight refracting on her pale skin. _

"_Oh really?" She tilted her head to the side. "Who says that?", she asked and her dark hair was flowing lazily in the summer wind. "Your Mummy?"_

"_The bible", Anne explained, but her voice was shaking and instead of freezing with respect, Wentworth laughed out loud and the sound set her whole body in motion, contracted muscles, smoothed skin, cast light and shadows on her body, which in the sharp, glimmering light looked like a Fata Morgana. _

"_It's refreshing", she said, moving her bare feet through the soft waves. "Come in."_

"_I...I can't", Anne stammered, holding her parasol like an anchor. Again the sparkling laugh sounded and she watched hypnotized how the strange girl shed even the last bit of clothing and stepped into the water._

_She saw her legs, the curve of her bottom, the line, where her spine crawled up her back, blended into her neck, the sharp edges of her shoulder blades, sticking out in the movement. _

_She turned around and she saw the curve of her breasts, disappearing under her loosely flowing hair, the red lines, where her corset had pierced her skin. _

_She was beautiful._

"_Come in", the dark haired girl repeated, stretching out one hand. "You don't have to be afraid."_

_And Anne let her parasol fall to the floor, cast one last glance over to the manor house, which seemed to be watching her from the hill with dark eyes, and unbuttoned her dress. _

"_I'm not afraid", she said, when she stood next to Wentworth in the water, her own skin even paler. "Not at all", she repeated and went under. _

* * *

"We all change", Hetty said cautiously and Anne could hear her confusion and insecurity even through the wall.

"Are you sure?", Wentworth asked caustically. "Do you think that the murder can become a pacifist, the coward a hero?

Silence and Anne's heart was pounding, nearly jumping out of the window.

"Of course", Hetty said after a while. "We're human. Where would we be if we couldn't change?"

Again silence.

"I don't know", Wentworth whispered and she heard her sigh. "Is Anne like a sister for you, too?", she suddenly asked and Hetty's laugh made breathing a lot easier for a few moments.

"Yes", the girl chuckled and the bed squeaked again. "But she's also my cousin."

"Your cousin?", Wentworth repeated. "I didn't know that."

"Few people do. Anne grew up with her mother, her father was Daddy's older brother, but he died shortly after her birth and my aunt... she is... certifiably insane would probably be the correct description", Hetty pondered. "Daddy didn't want her anywhere near us. Alcohol problem, you know?"

"Yeah", Wentworth mumbled and her voice was barely audible. "My grandmother is good friends with her."

"Oh really?", Hetty cried out. "Then you have to know Anne of yore, right?"

A few moments passed in silence. "Yes", Wentworth said finally. "I do."

"Really?" Hetty sounded ecstatic. "Why did you never tell me?

A sigh, the stuttering of a heart, the tearing of a body.

"It's not so important", Wentworth finally whispered. "It was a long time ago."

_A long time ago..._ She trembled, pressed her palms flat against the cold glass. _Not so important... _Memories flooded her head, the cold water of the lake, the scent of autumn, when she kissed her for the first time, the hidden laughs, when she'd steal away on the weekends just to see her.

_Not so important._

She stared into the candlelight, at the flickering image of herself in the window. A girl with eyes the colour of amber stared back.

She'd loved. Had fallen in love with a girl long before she knew that it was wrong, before she knew that love came with restrictions and paradoxes, expiration dates and conditions.

She'd love like a child its idol, like girl her crush, like a woman her lover.

She'd loved.

With her breath shaking she blew out the candle on the windowsill and only a long time after, when she sat alone in the darkness, did she realize that she was crying.

_Forgiveness_.

* * *

_**Gratitude**_

Noun - 1. the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful

Synonyms: appreciation, indebtedness, thankfulness, frugality, grace

* * *

It was the twins' laughs waking her up in the morning, the rumbling and screaming, the two little bodies who jumped on her bed right along with Fritzchen, the poodle, ripping her violently out of the confusing, nightmarish pictures, which had held her captive during the night.

She laughed out and tickled them until they couldn't breathe only to tie them to their chairs for breakfast, which Mus and Sophie had prepared, because it were the only two minutes when you could get a hold of their numerous limbs.

It was a glorious day, one, that smelled like waffles and coffee, tea and bagels and it reminded her so much of the days, when she'd escaped her mother's control for the weekend and driven up to Manchester.

She couldn't look her in the eye.

She walked down the beach, staring onto the crashing, blue-grey waves and thought that there were in fact these boxes, these jars full of bitter sweet memories, the mornings she'd woken up next to her with this blissful feeling of finally being home and she sank down onto the wet sand, blinking into the sky, trying to understand if it was in fact her, who'd destroyed it all.

* * *

_It had been a weekend like so many others, where she'd slipped off the moment her mother had again emptied three quarters of the Sherry bottle and had taken the train up north to be with her._

_Things had changed quickly after their first kiss. Innocence turned into bravery, giggling into blissful smiles, which beamed at them from every mirror they encountered and silence turned into music, filling the emptiness inside them._

_They were nervous, stumbled, tripped, fell. A strange dance of clumsy limbs and trembling hands, which held a certain kind of graceful elegance and they both whispered it in these hastily breathed moments between two mouths. _

"_Promise me, you won't stop..."_

"_Promise me..."  
_

_"Don't stop...please, never stop."_

"_Never stop..."_

_And they didn't stop, didn't until Anne came home one Sunday afternoon and her mother had just learned from one of her friends that the bastard girl was also a lesbian. _

_And the girl, her daughter spent most of her time with. _

"_Satan's brood!", she cried over and over again. "One has to exorcise it, you viper! I did everything in my power to keep him from you and then you go and sin against your Maker like that?"_

_She yelled a lot that day over the smell of alcohol and valium and a lot of it Anne couldn't even understand, when her mother dragged her over to the sink by her hair and cut off the long, dark strands with the garden shears. _

"_Satan's brood!", she cried, while her head was smashed violently against the sharp edge of the faucet, ripping open the skin of her forehead in the process. "Monster! Didn't I drill piety into your bones? And that's how you thank me?"_

_She didn't understand much of what her mother threw at her head and screamed in her ears and when she later stared at her image in the mirror, covered in blood she still didn't understand what sin she'd committed. _

_She only felt the pounding of blood, the confusion and then the euphoria when the girl in the mirror with the blood stained, spiky hair began to smile. _

_Forgiveness, gratitude..._

* * *

It had taken years for her to forgive her mother. For the scar on her forehead, the years in isolation, for all the pain afterwards.

She'd been afraid back then, but the fear had come later, long after the blood had finally dried.

Nellie, her ex-nanny had patched her up and she'd taken the train to Manchester that same day to stand not twelve hours after her departure that very morning again on Wentworth's doorstep, telling her that she wanted to stay.

The euphoria had lasted three days.

Hours, in which she'd been high on adrenaline, had been jumping from chair to chair to her girlfriends utter amusement and worry and had been laughing giddily with that huge, white bandage around her head, getting drunk on kisses and touches.

The fear had come later. Much later.

She was grateful for the fear, was grateful for what she had. Was grateful for Mus, who'd made her escape to Lyme possible, when she'd needed it ten years ago, was grateful for Sophie and the Groveland-kids for making her part of their family.

She was grateful that Lizzie was her sister.

Anne didn't know why the girl had caught her eye that day at King's Cross station. She'd been alone there to observe people, their dramatics and tears, their screams of excitement and the overall tenseness and then there'd been that girl in a red silk dress, with those absurdly high shoes and a suitcase, wandering in circles around the waiting area like she was lost and it had reminded her so painfully of Wentworth that she hadn't been able to breathe for a few moments.

But Lizzie wasn't Wentworth.

They had the same kind of charm, stood out of a crowd the same way, fascinating and bewitching people everywhere they went.

She'd loved Wentworth platonically, physically, sexually, had memorized every inch of her with the tips of her fingers and she still could taste her on her tongue.

But Lizzie... Lizzie was her friend, her sister and she was just as lost as Anne had been and she'd picked her up, because she'd wished someone had been there for her when it all went to hell.

But you couldn't save someone, who didn't want to be saved.

She was grateful for her mother, grateful that she'd forced her to leave Wentworth, because it made her the person, she was today. She'd tried things out, had developed, had technically lost her virginity to a guy named Jason in her second semester, but she'd never stopped loving a girl.

No matter how wrong it was.

* * *

"Where's Lizzie?"

The question came out of thin air and Anne's heart was pounding like mad when she turned around in the darkness of her room only to see two small figures sitting on her bed.

"What are you doing here?", she nearly cried out, moving closer to see Henry's and Liam's pale faces in the silver moonlight. "Shouldn't you be in bed already?"

"Where's Lizzie?", Liam asked again, ignoring her question. They both wore pyjamas with Phineas and Ferb motives on their chests, but there was none of their usual smart-aleck-attitude to be seen.

They looked like children.

"She's with her ...family", Anne tried to explain and sank down on the mattress beside them.

"But we're her family!", Henry cried out with much of the same desperation Lou had shown the previous evening.

"Of course we are", Anne reassured him, smiling slightly when she caught sight of a Perry, the platypus plush toy in Liam's arms. "But Lizzie has to do something."

"But what?", Henry asked with a frown. "Tomorrow's Christmas, no one's working then."

Anne smiled slightly. "It's complicated", she said, pushing some sweaty strands of hair out of his face. "Sometimes people have to do strange things to reach their goals."

"Like a maze?", Henry asked and Anne nodded. "But what's the goal?"

She looked at them, knowing that perhaps it wasn't right to promise them something, she knew she couldn't guarantee to happen. But she was just as desperate as the twins, wanted just as much for Lizzie to come home, wanted to believe in something, anything to happen.

Because it was Christmas. And she felt the flame burning in her chest, soaring high and high when she leaned down and grinned consiprationally. "_We_."

A smile erupted on both their faces. "Are you sure?"

"But of course", she said. "We always find back to the people we love, don't you think?"

"But Christmas begins tomorrow evening", Liam remarked shyly. "How should she make it? Lou said, she's captured in the north. That's pretty far, right?"

"Yeah", Anne said quietly and something in her chest tore. "That's very far. But you know, perhaps Santa can bring her."

"But he doesn't exist", Henry grumbled, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "That's just Daddy with an arti- artificial beard."

Anne laughed, a bright, sparkling laugh, which seemed to chime in the dark, to shimmer just like the mobile made of glass and seashells hanging in front of the window. "Yeah, but your Daddy is also the one, who hid a magic ticket in her backpack", she explained and both their faces lit up.

"Like the ones from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?", Liam asked excitedly and Henry, too, was beaming. "Will she use the elevator?"

"Exactly", Anne winked. "She'll find us, I promise." She leaned down, whispered it into their ears.

"She can't help it."

A while later she stepped back into the hallway to get some blankets since she'd promised the devil twins that they'd have a sleepover tonight so that she finally could get them to even _think_ about closing their eyes.

They were way too excited, talking about elevators and tickets and what was the best way to contact Lizzie so that she'd be here in time for dinner tomorrow.

She closed the closet's door, where they stored the blankets and found herself staring directly into Wentworth's pale face.

Breathing, pounding, breathing. Oxygen. Memories of skin against skin and cold lake water on a hot afternoon in August.

Wentworth opened her mouth to say something and Anne knew how badly-soundproofed the walls here were and she wondered if she'd heard everything.

And if it would change anything.

But she closed her mouth again, nodded stiffly and marched down the stairs, leaving Anne alone in the cold hallway with a bunch of blankets in her arms.

_Forgiveness... Gratitude..._

* * *

_**Blessing**_

Noun - 1. the act or words of a person who blesses.

2\. a special favour, mercy, or benefit

3\. praise; devotion; worship

4\. approval or good wishes

Synonyms: letting go

* * *

She woke up in the morning with two heaps of unidentifiable limbs slung around her body, one blonde head of hair laying on her stomach, the other one in the crook of her neck.

It was strangely heart-warming, even though it was so uncomfortable.

_Blessing_...

They decorated the Christmas tree after breakfast and by lunchtime both Lou and Hetty were tipsy, while the other set of twins nearly blew up the whole tree when they tried to make the fir needles sparkle, which had Wentworth close to another heart attack again.

In the afternoon the older twins' giggling increased and it only took another hour until Anne understood why, namely because Charles Hayter appeared on their front porch at quarter past four to confess his undying love for Hetty.

They were inseparable ever since.

_Blessing..._

And she played hide and seek with the younger twins, helped Sophie with cooking and disinfecting Petri dishes and laughed with Mus while he mended his Santa costume and predicted snow for the day, even though they both knew that only Lizzie could make such predictions. She did it all just to forget about Lou and Wentworth, who'd disappeared behind the cliffs after Hayter's confessions.

_Blessing..._

She wanted to call Lizzie. Wanted to tell her that she was still seventeen, that all these years of meditation and development didn't help anything and that she was still just a naïve, little girl, pushed into corsets and petticoats by her mother.

She wanted to hear her voice, wanted to tell her that it was okay to feel alone, that she was just as lost, just as alone as she was.

"Come home, Lizzie", she whispered with Fritzchen, the poodle, laying at her feet while watching Mus and Sophie read Jules Verne to the younger twins after Anne had calmed them enough to make them give Lizzie another night to find her way to Lyme before they started building shaceships for a rescue mission.

_Blessing..._

* * *

It was a cold, crisp morning, when she stepped out onto the front porch on December 25th, the colourful scarf slung around her shoulders.

It had snowed that night and the whole wide world was covered in snow. She saw her breath in front of her face, saw flakes _dancing, falling, turning_.

She closed her eyes, she'd understood a long time ago, on a morning similar to this one that the only possibility to count silence consisted of counting snowflakes.

Anne opened her eyes, saw Wentworth from the corner of her eyes, standing on the other edge of the porch, her pale face, those burning, dark eyes directed at Anne.

_Blessing..._

They stared at each other, on this morning in December in the drifting snow and Anne understood that despite all these years, all the development and the breathing exercises, she was still the girl, that loved another.

_Forgiveness, gratitude, blessing..._

It changed so little.

Suddenly a noise broke through the silence of falling snow. Tramping, crunching, the heavy breathing of another human being and when Anne raised her head and tore her eyes from Wentworth's, she saw a figure stomping down the road.

Black coat trailing behind her, brown-red hair escaping from the confines of the scarf wrapped around her head, a heavy backpack, that nearly fell from her small shoulders and Anne felt herself suddenly reminded of that day at King's Cross station, when she'd found the lost one.

"_Lizzie!" _

* * *

**A/N: So what do you think? Don't hate Wentworth, she'll redeem herself;)  
**

**For those of you on Darcy withdrawals... I promise him in the next chapter, deal? As a warning: That one was also inspired by the Rocky Horror Picture Show, at least parts of it...**


	22. Chapter 21 Cinderella

**A/N: I did it! I wrote that chapter (and survived Christmas - with all limbs still attached). I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and I'm sorry I didn't update further.**

**Three important things:**

**1\. I'll change the rating next time. We're running and there's a cliff. You'll know when we jump and the fall will be hard. And we'll be falling for a long time. So if you don't feel up to it, stop reading now. **

**2\. I'm studying psychology, so I can tell you all about neurotransmitters, receptor agonists and why it's very unlikely that you'll die from a panic attack. But I'm no doctor and my medical knowledge is limited to TV shows, which is a bit unfortunate for the turn of events this story will take. So if anyone of you has a medical background and would be willing to answer a few questions I might have... That would be awfully wonderful ;) **

**3\. I don't know when I'll be able to update again. The next german chapter isn't yet written and finals begin next month... Perhaps I'll be able to sneak an update in, but that's kinda... uncertain. Again, I'm sorry. **

**Soundtrack: **

**Papillon - The Airborne Toxic Event**

**Sometime Around Midnight - The Airborne Toxic Event**

**Sweet Transvestite - The Rocky Horror Picture Show**

**Disclaimer: Nah... this is not the way Austen would have writte it... She was a bit too focused on... propriety in my opinion to allow to unmarried people be unsupervised in closed rooms, right? **

_**At some time during this chapter, you'll cry out: "No, she didn't!" Well, yes she did and I tell you it was all planned this way;)**_

* * *

**Chapter 21: Cinderella  
**

The silk stockings under her dress were itching like crazy and she cursed herself for not putting on a normal pair of tights.

But the twins had protested, had screwed up their angelic faces, babbling something about style and the classiness of stockings with lace trim and philosophising about "no panty lines" and "easy access".

At that, Lizzie had asked them with a tilted head and a pokerface if therefore she should forego underwear completely, which had the twins in stitches until she'd left the house that evening.

And yet, to be honest she had contemplated going for it. Christmas had done some nasty things to her brain and she wasn't sure if she'd started acting like a widow in mourning before or after that disaster holiday.

Whatever it was, it needed to stop. _Immediately_.

She was here. In this ballroom, under the chandeliers' sparkling lights, reflected by the partly mirrored, partly glazed walls; the humming of animatedly talking people in tuxedos and ball gowns, the clinking of champagne flutes and the soft flow of the music in her ears, feeling like the beggar playing the princess for the evening, like the serial killer behind his mask, the only sober one amidst a bender.

It was a kind of rebellion.

She wore the dress, which she'd stolen from Jane's wardrobe when cleaning up there after the holidays. It was a green silk dress, shimmering with every movement and Anne had shortened it, cutting off the sleeves and a good part of the skirt until the fabric just grazed her knees and embroidered lines from My Chemical Romance' "Sing" on the inside until it stuck to Lizzie's body like a second skin, giving her just the right amount of arrogance and confidence, she needed to survive amidst the sharks in this ballroom.

It was a deal. An education for her relenting into the game. Freedom for voluntary captivity. A few years in exchange for a lifetime.

She danced between people, between groups consisting of always the same sort of persons like a butterfly, somehow managing to even look graceful in those ridiculously high shoes, the twins had forced her to wear.

It was a game. A stage play. A hand, pulling the strings like a puppet master.

The air in the ballroom was heavy from the scent of perfume and cigars and with her champagne flute lightly in hand, Lizzie made her way through the crowd over to Maddie and Ed, the other two scholarship students for whom Rosings Hospital had opened its doors.

A single curl, which had escaped from the elaborate hairdo Anne had created, was tickling the bare skin of her back – the dress barely covered the outline of the tattoo on her back.

"And I win again", Lizzie declared, startling the both of them by sneaking up from behind. "I told you that old geezer was cheating on his wife."

Both of them whirled around and Ed lifted one eyebrow in surprise. "Ten minutes, Bennet? I'm impressed."

"You're wrong, Eddie." She singsonged, tilting her head so that the shimmering green stones of her earrings sparkled in the candlelight. "Eight minutes."

"Record time", Maddie called out, her black-rimmed eyes squinted, the corners of her mouth raised in amusement, but she wasn't looking at Lizzie, instead her focus was solely on Ed. "And you're trying _sooo_ had."

Her tone was condescending and Lizzie didn't know if she should laugh or roll her eyes in annoyance. Those two had been caught in some twisted kind of on-off-relationship for what seemed to be forever and even though they were constantly picking on each other and making the other's life a living hell, they still always ended up together.

It was like a Simpsons episode. A bloody Sisyphean challenge.

"That's futile", Ed snorted, his face as red as a beetroot. "You're just too... _cold_", he whispered and her grip on her champagne flute intensified.

"And you're way too insensitive to actually register changes in temperature", she hissed, throwing her blue dyed hair over her shoulders – Lizzie was pretty sure, she only chose that colour to contrast Ed's orange head of hair.

The girl in the green dress rolled her eyes. "Children, can we please concentrate on the fact that I won - _again_? You owe me twenty pounds, you losers", she demanded and stretched out her hand in a bored manner.

"Lizzie, we already gave you a fortune", Ed groaned, reaching for his wallet. "That's not bloody fair!"

"I didn't force you to do anything", Lizzie replied, taking a sip from her champagne. "Supply and demand, dear Eddie", she explained. "Only because those chocolate-orange cookies are on sale at the local supermarket, doesn't mean that you have to buy them, you know? Because honestly... Chocolate-orange? The mix is kinda gross." She screwed up her face.

"I lost you there again, Liz", Ed admitted with a frown on his face. "When the hell did you try and eat chocolate-orange cookies?"

"Sylvester", Lizzie promptly replied. "Two years ago. Craig advertised it as some kind of miracle cure for hangovers. Needless to say, I spent New Years Day hanging over the toilet bowl."

The others screwed up their pretty faces. "Why are you listening to Craig at all?", Ed asked with barely hidden confusion. Maddie and he were friends of Lizzie and Charlotte from med school and therefore knew Craig by association."That guy also tells everybody, who will listen that this pile of junk he calls a car, is actually a Ferrari."

"Hey", Lizzie cried out, pointing her finger at him. "Never question another person's reality. It could _potentially_ kill you."

"Oh, Lizzie!", Maddie chimed in with a sugary sweet smile. "You know that our dear Eddie here can't resist anything, neither chocolate-orange cookies nor the bare-breasted blonde in the bar last week."

"How many times do I have to tell you that I didn't do anything with that girl!", Ed cried out in annoyance, tugging on his hair with obvious frustration. "She stumbled!"

"And fell directly in your lap?", Maddie asked caustically with a sharply raised eyebrow.

"Yes!" His voice shrilled and Lizzie closed her eyes so as not witness the impending explosion.

"With her tongue down your throat and her hand in your pants?" Maddie's voice went through the roof, belying the bite of her words. "Must have been a very unlucky fall."

"Children...", Lizzie interjected, but the couple in front of her just didn't seem to hear a word she said, they were so caught up in their own little world.

"I thought we've resolved that", Ed cried out. "You tore her away by her hair and spilled beer on her shirt. Isn't that revenge enough?"

"Apparently not...", Lizzie muttered, already seeing the collision, the crash and burn in front of her.

"I still got that pair of secateurs in my bedside table", Maddie promptly told him. "And you'll know when I've had my revenge."

He grew pale, only to turn beet red a second later. "Not before I've cut off that bird's nest", he replied, tugging a bit forcefully on one bright blue strand of hair. "What kind of colour is that by the way?"

"Midnight-blue!" Maddie's eyes were burning with fury.

"Oh really?", Ed asked, tugging again on her hair. "What a pity. And you were _such _a pretty girl once upon a time."

She batted away his hand harshly. "We both know that you like dumb blondes, Eddie-kins. Well, what a shame that I'm neither dumb nor blond anymore", she hissed.

"Exactly", Lizzie chimed in. "Let's all remember that we're intelligent human beings, who do not start their crazy foreplay in a ballroom -"

"I always made an exception for you", Ed whispered in that deep voice, he thought was seductive and the rest of the world thought to be an embarrassingly poor Darth Vader imitation.

"Yeah, the exception that you can screw brainless blondes on the side", Maddie snorted, chucking down the rest of her champagne.

"I never did that", Ed revolted. "You always broke up with me before. What was I supposed to think?"

"Perhaps that you should keep it in your pants for more than 48 hours?!", Maddie cried out, anger and alcohol rising in her cheeks, colouring them in a furious red.

"Control!", Lizzie cried out. "That's the cue. Children, how about -"

"I thought we were over!", Ed practically screamed. "You broke up with me!"

"Because you asked me if it was okay when we also dated other people!", Maddie retorted, swinging one of her tiny fists dangerously close to his face. He held her by her wrist.

"That was my way of finding out if we were exclusive!", he cried out with a great deal of desperation in his voice.

"What?!", Maddie screeched and Lizzie, who couldn't bear any screeching ever since Christmas, screwed up her face painfully. "What's so hard to understand about the term "relationship"?"

"Many people have relationships", Ed replied. "Many people have many kinds of relationships and you're not exactly the most talkative person when it comes to feelings!"

"And that coming from Mr. Cool-as-a-cucumber!" They both stared at each other, both breathing heavily and Lizzie knew that they were only about two seconds away from tearing off each other's clothes.

"Do you two still think it funny if someone tells you to get a room?", she asked, clapping her hands. They both stared at her. "Or not?", Lizzie asked and clapped her hands again. "Wonderful, then we're doing things differently." The smile fell from her face and she stretched out a hand in demand. "My money."

Ed groaned, pulling out a twenty pound note from his wallet and thrusting it in Lizzie's palm. "Bloodsucker", he hissed and Lizzie beamed, storing the bank note in her cleavage

Ed's eyes grew wide and round. "Did you just...", he stuttered, pointing at her cleavage in shock. "Did you..."

"What?", Lizzie asked smugly. "I store my phone there, too, from time to time."

"Fuck", it escaped Ed and he turned around to Maddie. "Why don't you do stuff like that?"

"Because I'm not wearing a bra?", she replied grumpily. "Have you seen how tight this dress is?"

"Fuck!", he cried out again, louder this time, his eyes now focused rather obviously on Maddie's breasts.

"Me, too", Lizzie called out in that moment and Ed's head jolted up. "No", she declared energetically and the corners of his mouth dropped. "No. No!" She pointed at Maddie, too, telling her with a rather resolute "No!" that, whatever was passing through her mind at the moment, wasn't on the menu today.

"We're in a ballroom", she explained. "At some Welcome-Party for the society, that's paying for our bloody scholarships. You won't do it on the dance floor. You'll keep your hands by yourself and lower your voices if you don't want the dictator to find you." Both of the shuddered at the thought of Lady Catherine's wrath. "And if you can't control yourselves, there's always that nice, little closet down the hall, capitó?"

"Capitó", they both mumbled at the same time like chastised, little school children before Maddie started whining.

"And what should we talk about instead?"

"Perhaps about the fact that I won a bet _again_?", Lizzie suggested, raising her chin with pride. "That takes talent, people."

"Oh please", Maddie brushed it off. "You bet that some old skeezer is cheating on his wife. Nothing new there, right? Isn't that like the norm for those people?"

"Cheating on your wife with the pretty, male bartender over there?", Lizzie asked, arching an eyebrow. "I don't think so."

"With the bartender?", Ed snorted and even Maddie was gaping. "Are you talking about that head of hair gel over there? Oh, I knew that boy was gay!"

"Oh, pssht", Lizzie sounded. "Not that one. Gel-head only loves himself, if that counts as homosexuality I don't know, but he's not the one, pervy old man there is shooting come-hither looks."

"Oh no?", Ed asked, furrowing his brow. "But who is it then?"

"The ginger-haired guy, who looks like your twin brother", Lizzie replied with a wide grin. "I knew he played for the other team."

Ed groaned, while Maddie held up her hand for a high-five. "Genius", she squealed, giggling into her champagne flute.

"Do you got some kind of App for that, or how do you do it every time?", Ed asked, his face still beet red. He looked like a freshly cooked lobster.

"Nope." She popped the "P". "Only a lot of time spent with Craig. I tell you, that guy is like some metal detecting device when it comes to stuff like that."

Maddie screwed up her face. "That's disturbing", she said. "Nearly as much as the fact that Eddie-kins here wants to try his hand at Plastic Surgery."

"What's disturbing about that?", Ed revolted at that. "If my memory serves me correctly, you're stuck in neurology when the morning comes – that's what I'd call horrifying."

"Oh really?", Maddie began anew and Lizzie rolled her eyes. There wasn't enough alcohol on this planet to tune out these two. "You're the one, who wants to turn his hobby into his job and touch big boobs all day!"

"_Children_..."

"Plastic surgery is about a lot more than just breast augmentations", Ed revolted and he would have continued his rant if Lizzie hadn't put a stop on it.

"Guys, dictator on three o'clock", she stage-whispered and even though there was no Catherine DeBourgh lurking around between groups of politely drunk gentleman, staring disapprovingly in their direction, the threat still managed to shut them up for a good ten seconds.

Ed groaned for what seemed to be the hundredth time this evening, running his hand through his tousled hair. "Whatever, I still don't get how Charlotte could bet against you in this regard", he said, gazing at Maddie with a frown on his face.

"No one gets Charlotte...", Lizzie said cryptically, not wanting to talk about her ex-flatmate at all. Charlotte had wanted to escort Collins to this evening's event, but the hospital, where she was doing her placement, had put her directly on night shift and only with great reluctance and a great deal of sulking she'd let Collins go with Lizzie.

"She won the bet officially", Maddie threw in with a wave of her hand.

"_Officially_", Lizzie repeated, rolling her eyes. "Did she tell you that?"

"She was very proud", Maddie nodded, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight.

"Rookie", Lizzie snorted. "She bribed Craig while I couldn't talk."

"Poor Lizzie", Ed said sarcastically, patting her arm. "You know you're supposed to say no to the third round, don't you, darling?"

"That implies self-control", Maddie interjected. "Funny, that you of all people should preach such virtue!"

"For the hundredth time, Madeleine!", Ed, now at the end of his patience, barked. "I didn't fuck that blonde bimbo and if you -"

"But you wanted to!", Maddie cried out and Lizzie was close to dragging them both by their ears to separate corners of the ballroom like bratty preschool children.

"The Professor got a fiancée either way", she quickly interjected, catching their interest long enough.

"Fiancée?", Maddie repeated. "How do you know that again?"

"I met her", Lizzie replied proudly. "She's Ed's favourite type of girl."

"Blond, brainless and big boobs?", Maddie clarified, while Ed was tugging desperately on his hair.

"And a substance abuse problem", Lizzie added beaming. "She's a riot."

"I rather thought the Professor preferred brunettes", Maddie said, shooting Lizzie a meaningful glance, which the girl in the green dress ignored with ease.

"Nope", she said, making a mindless gesture with her hand. "It's always the blonde girls. They're perfect for arrogant Machiavellists with an OCD. So easy to manipulate, you know?"

They were both staring at her with wide eyes and she felt the well-known shiver running down her spine.

"And if they grow tired of their little plaything, they can just put it in the corner with some sparkling Gucci handbag. Occupies them for hours at a time. Perfect, right?"

"Ah... Lizzie...", Maddie began tentatively, staring with wide eyes at something behind her.

"And do you know the best thing?", she asked. "Due to her little drug problem she's so out of it that she doesn't even notice when you put her in some insane asylum for a few weeks. She'll think she's on vacation on some tropical island."

She smiled and the pins and needles intensified and she swore, she could feel his breath on the bare skin of her neck.

"Lizzie..." This time it was Ed, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"He's right behind me, isn't he?", she asked with a sigh and they both nodded in unison.

"Wonderful", Lizzie muttered and turned around.

Tall, dark and handsome. He looked like she remembered him and yet so differently. She saw the line of his jaw, the lips contorted into a thin, barely there smile and the dark, sparkling eyes. He wore a tux and a bow tie and she felt the same indescribable feeling like so many weeks ago surging through her veins.

Exhilarating and numbing. Like coming too close to an electroshock apparatus.

"Miss Bennet", he said with a smile and also his voice was the same. "I see you're still a gifted storyteller."

She stared him, her lips slightly opened, shutting her eyes tightly before she drained her glass in one motion.

"I need a drink", she declared, pushing past him to get to the bar.

People around her paled, blurred together, became dabs of paint, barely discernable and all that she could think about was that a month ago she'd have mistaken these pins and needles, this buzz of electricity for happiness.

For pure bliss.

She'd have been happy if she'd met _him_ instead of his secretary that day she'd called "_tomorrow_" in her mind.

But she didn't.

And now they were living in the "after" and "over" part and whatever had happened before was now irrelevant. Because Christmas had happened and he hadn't been there.

"Elizabeth." She closed her eyes, gripping the glass of her Vodka Tonic with so much strength that she was afraid it would break.

"You're still there", she stated without looking at him. He was standing right behind her, slightly leaning against the bar.

"Did you hope I would just disappear?" She couldn't make out the tone of his voice. Amused, perhaps. Even slightly sad.

"That's what happens normally when I ignore my hallucinations", Lizzie explained, taking a sip from her drink. "They disappear."

"Do you have them frequently?", he asked and this time she was sure to hear amusement in his voice.

"From time to time", she said without looking up. "At the moment there's one, which just doesn't seem to understand that it never had my permission to call me by my given name in the first place."

"We're not on university grounds anymore", he replied tentatively and she laughed out. A clear, sparkling laugh, glittering and shining just like the crystal pieces hanging from the chandeliers above them.

And just as sharp.

"No", she said, shaking her head. "We're not. But we aren't friends either, right?"

"Are these two mutually exclusive?" His voice was gentle and she wanted to turn around, to go back to that morning in his apartment, but that was before and this was after.

"In this case..." She turned her glass slowly, watching how the light was caught and danced on the surface. "Friendship usually implies a lot more communication, don't you think?"

He laughed out. A bit bitterly. "You're talking an awful lot, Lizzie, but you've never communicated", he replied and there was a certain kind of... _frustration_ evident in his voice, making Lizzie's muscles tense in response.

"No way you would've recognized", she hissed, whirling around, for a short moment caught in the way he looked at her out of those dark eyes.

He held her by her wrist. "Don't", he said and she froze. Both of them stared at her wrists, which were again covered in bracelets over bracelets ever since Christmas, piercing his skin when he'd caught her there.

He let her go, taking a step back.

"Do you... Would you like to dance, Miss Bennet?"

She looked at him, wondering if this was some kind of sick joke or if he really thought she'd want to dance with him after everything.

"With pleasure", she said beaming with a smile not reaching her eyes before she turned it off at the flick of a switch, gazing at him with a blank face. "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?", he repeated, furrowing his brow in confusion.

Lizzie smiled, a bit bitterly, a bit coldly. "_Tomorrow_", she said and turned around.

She didn't get far.

A few steps through the ballroom, hastily made in order to escape his proximity as fast as possible, unfortunately brought directly in the path of one of those dancing couples and even though she was able to evade them, she still separated the couple in the process and while the woman in the floor-length, purple dress was spinning helplessly over the dance floor, the blonde man in the tux only stumbled for a few steps.

"You!", he cried out, pointing a finger at her. The nails were painted black and this little detail occupied Lizzie's mind long enough so that he could shout out another "You!" before she was able to ask if she looked like his dead great-aunt's spirit to him.

"Second person singular", she said, applauding him. "I'm impressed. Most children learn that in primary school, but if it has taken you so long to grasp it, then I think applause is in order."

He laughed out and came closer. "Oh, I knew it was you!", he cried out and from up close she could see that he wore eyeliner and that there were a couple of earrings glittering on his ears.

"Your great-aunt Nancy?", she asked, tilting her head to the side. "Sorry to disappoint you, buddy, but if mistakes like that are a regular occurrence for you, you should definitely go and get that brain checked out."

"My great-aunt Nancy is perfectly healthy, Runaway-girl", Eyeliner-guy brushed it off. He was also wearing a bow tie with a myriad of little rhinestones covering it, glittering and sparkling in the light of the chandeliers.

"Hey, I got rules for the use of nicknames", Lizzie cried out with the sinking feeling that she somehow knew this rather flamboyant personality, who'd left his still spinning dance partner to her own fate, fully concentrating on her now.

"Oh, Runaway, don't act like we're strangers", he chided her with a pout, making it rather obvious that he wore an interesting shade of bright red lipstick.

"Isn't that what we are?", she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Normally I remember people, who claim an acquaintance with me. But they're usually the same ones you're warned about in preschool and commercials, because getting into their cars is a sure way to end up in a crime statistic."

His pale blue eyes grew round, before lifting at the outer corners to form a smile. "Runaway, I believe we've had the same conversation on the evening we met."

"Which I still can't remember", she added.

He laughed, showing perfectly white teeth and a tongue piercing. "You were pretty drunk, Runaway", he said indulgently. "And still you delivered a very long, unusually logical lecture for someone in your state about the dangers of one-night-stands before we and our two friends left for my apartment."

"Oh no!", Lizzie cried out when it finally dawned on her.

He came closer. "Oh yes, little Runaway. As if someone had flicked a switch, you jumped up and dragged your little friend with you." He was back to pouting again, showing sparkling white teeth and the line of his lipstick. "And I so wanted to make you some omelette for breakfast."

"What a shame that I didn't know about that", Lizzie replied, her head spinning faster with the minute. "I would have stayed for some omelette."

"Oh really?" He came just another step closer and the spark in his eyes and the way he held his head so that the glitter in his hair caught the light overwhelmed her just a bit. "There would have been strawberries, too", he added and she nodded as if this was a very sensible thing to say.

"I love strawberries", she declared. "With chocolate, too?"

"Oh definitely", he confirmed and he was so close that she could take in this strange combination of a tuxedo, make-up and glitter only in separate pieces.

"Coffee?", she asked, tilting her head to the side.

"But of course!", he cried out with slight indignation when she questioned his ability of providing coffee for breakfast. "I've got an espresso machine", he stated and she nodded as if this was the solution to all the world's problems. "And a milk frother."

"I love Cappuccino", she told him with a smile.

"Everybody loves Cappuccino", he replied. "With sugar of course", he added with a sigh. "And cocoa-powder hearts,"

"Oh no!", Lizzie protested in mock horror. "I draw the line at cocoa-powder hearts."

"You don't want cocoa-powder hearts?", he asked just as horrified and pouted again. "Why ever not?"

"Because they're cocoa-powder hearts?", she retorted, shaking her head as if it was so obvious.

"What's wrong with cocoa-powder hearts?" He looked like a little school-boy and despite all that glitter on his face she wanted to pinch his cheek like some crazy kind of grandma.

"They're cocoa-powder hearts", Lizzie repeated slowly so that even the children at the back of the class would understand. "They're just not manly enough."

"Not manly enough?!", Blonde-Glitter-Guy cried out. "I am manly!" She took him in from head to toe, saw the glitter-gel in his hair, the eyeliner and the lipstick, the sparkling bow tie and the black painted fingernails and arched an eyebrow with obvious scepticism.

"I am manly", he protested again, pointing at his Adam's apple. "Look!"

She snorted. "I believe there are more persuasive body ports to that question, but this isn't quite the right venue to drop your pants, don't you think?"

He looked at her with a pout before his gaze fell on something behind her and his face brightened considerably.

"Darcy, my man!", he cried out and Lizzie felt like someone had put some ice-cubes into the back of her dress. "Come here, this young lady here has left me because of my cocoa-powder hearts!"

She felt him like she did before. Like a fucking magnet, pulling skin and bones, blood and muscles towards him and she curled her hands into fists so as not to give in to temptation.

"Cocoa-powder hearts, Miss Bennet?", she heard him ask and she groaned.

"Is there a police station nearby?", she asked Blonde-Glitter-Guy and when he only stared at her in confusions she elaborated further. "I think I need a restraining order", she explained. "I mean, how many times do you have to literally _flee_ from someone before he gets the hint?"

The glittering man stared at her and then at Darcy before a huge smile spread on his bright red lips. "You know each other?", he asked and there was so much mischief in his eyes that Lizzie became nervous at the thought of what he might be planning.

"He was my professor", she explained. "_Ethics_." She said it with enough derision that it became obvious.

"Not your favourite subject, I take it?", the glittering man asked, arching one eyebrow.

"The gods haven't decided yet", Lizzie replied, feeling like her right arm was becoming even number with every minute Darcy stood next to her. He was just too _close_.

"Miss Bennet has a rather ambivalent relationship with the subject", Darcy voiced his opinion and Lizzie had the sudden urge to throw the contents of her glass at him and in his perfectly straight face.

"I have a rather _ambivalent_ relationship with a lot of things", Lizzie grunted, making the glittering man laugh. "Including _his_ way of talking about me as if I'm not in the room."

"Oh, Oh!", Glitter-guy cried out, clapping his hands in excitement. "This is getting better and better. Darcy, why didn't you tell me that your lovely student is such a little firecracker?" Beaming, he leaned down and whispered: "And that she's Runaway-girl?"

Lizzie heard Darcy sigh and she curled her hands into fists. "Miss Bennet, may I introduce my cousin Richard Fitzwilliam?"

"Cousin?", Lizzie repeated, blinking from the glittering man back to Darcy. Two men as different as day and night. "Is one of you a foundling by accident? Raised by elves? Switched at birth?"

"And she has a wanton imagination!", the glittering man, who apparently answered to the name of Richard, cried out. "But I have to disappoint you, Papillon. I ranged the woods around Pemberley many a time, but much to my chagrin I never met any people of the sídhe."

"What a shame", she offered her sincere condolences and smiled. Darcy groaned at the sight of his cousin's heartbroken expression.

"Richard, may I introduce Miss Elizabeth Bennet?", he asked and at the sound of her name Richard's whole face lit up.

"Miss Elizabeth Bennet?", he repeated, clapping his hands excitedly. "Oh, we're going to have _sooo_ much fun together! I just know it!"

"Hey, I still don't like cocoa-powder hearts!", Lizzie cried out, raising both her hands in protest.

"We'll change that", Fitzwilliam brushed it off. "No one can resist cocoa-powder hearts."

"Watch me", Lizzie grunted, but the glittering man only patted her head indulgently.

"You won't believe it, Darcy", he turned towards his cousin. "But she left me before I could make breakfast with cocoa-powder hearts."

"In my defence", Lizzie interjected. "I didn't know there would be any breakfast."

"You would have stayed for the omelette", Fitzwilliam stated.

"And for the chocolate covered strawberries", she added with a smile.  
"Not to mention the coffee", he reminded her, while Darcy was watching them with a stony expression on his face.

"Everybody loves Cappuccino."

"But not with cocoa-powder hearts." He was back to pouting again.

"Not with cocoa-powder hearts", she confirmed, shaking her head with laughter.

He grinned. "You shouldn't have sneaked out of the apartment in the middle of the night", he concluded, hugging her briefly with one arm.

"I really shouldn't have done that", she laughed before looking up, directly into Darcy's stony face. There was something sharp, something hard in his gaze and the grip around his glass was painfully strong.  
"To get back to the topic at hand", she began, a bit confused by Darcy's piercing black eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh", Fitzwilliam said. "One could call it a company and a family event at the same time", he explained. "Stuff like that goes hand in hand in our family."

Darcy sighed. "We're here at Lady Catherine's request", he explained curtly and without looking at her. "She's our aunt."

"You're related to the dictator?", Lizzie cried out, taking a step away from Richard. "Now I really don't know if I like you or not."

The glittering man grinned widely. "You should decide on the first option, Papillon. Because starting tomorrow we'll be working together ."

"Beg you pardon?", Lizzie asked in confusion, staring at the man with the earrings and the eyeliner questioningly.

"May I introduce myself? Darcy forgot to mention some crucial details. My name is Richard Fitzwilliam. Philosopher, trust-fund-baby and all around free spirit. I'm also the Head Physician of the Department of Paediatrics at Rosings Hospital." He grinned. "Would you like to dance, Miss Bennet?"

"With pleasure, Dr. Fitzwilliam", Lizzie answered mockingly and curtseyed before she took his outstretched hand and was led to the dance floor.

The orchestra was playing a waltz and in direct contrast to the carelessness with which he'd treated his previous dance partner, the glittering man guided her over the parquet with ease.

He laughed. "My, my", he said. "Papillon, what in heaven have you done to Darcy?"

Lizzie snorted. "Kicked him out of my apartment?", she replied, shaking her head at the memory.

He pulled his head back in surprise, pursing his lips. "And why on earth should you want do that to our dear Professor, Papillon? Didn't he satisfy you?"

Lizzie let out a sound somewhere between a choked outcry and bitter laugh and Richard had to hold her upright so that she didn't step out of the line.

"A rather strong reaction, I'd say", he remarked. "And rather telling. A bit Freudian perhaps?", he asked, raising an eyebrow.  
"Is that even a word?", Lizzie asked, coughing one last time. "And no", she continued. "It was moreover the absurdity of the situation, you know?"

"Of course", he said smoothly, whirling her around in a circle. "Whatever gets you through the night, darling."

They completed another round.

"So if it wasn't the lacking sexual prowess of my dear cousin..." Lizzie coughed again. "Then what induced you to kick him out of your cosy apartment in the middle of the night?"

"Why do you think it happened in the middle of the night?", she asked, arching her back and leaning back in a rather playful manner as if they were dancing a tango and not a waltz.

"Artistic licence", he replied and smiled. "Look, I didn't assume that it was your bed you kicked him out of!"

"But you're making assumptions about the time of day", she retorted and furrowed her brow. "Why would that be important?"

"Ambiance, my dear", he replied with a deep voice and a seductive smile. "It's important for the _mood_. The rest happens in my mind."

He spun her around again. "He acted like an arrogant, assumptive asshole. It annoyed me", she explained. "And I don't like being annoyed."

Fitzwilliam smiled smugly. "You don't mince words, do you, Papillon?" He shook his head slightly. "My compliment for the alliteration by the way."

"Oh, the doctor can read!", Lizzie cried out, smiling mischievously.

He pulled her closer, pressing her body against his own. "Oh, the doctor can do a lot more than that, darling."

"Oh really? I thought you only learned about the existence of the second person singular a good twenty minutes ago", she retorted and the blinding, white smile, which he bestowed upon her, was kind of surreal.

"You learn something new everyday", he said cryptically, whirling her around. "Did you know, for example, that Darcy also begins working at Rosings tomorrow?"

Lizzie swallowed. "No", she said, her heart pounding like mad. "Isn't he teaching as a professor anymore?"

"Not anymore." Fitzwilliam smiled. "He'll take over the ER."

Lizzie nodded. "Trauma surgeon, I remember." She sighed. "I really should have gotten that restraining order, because it's getting scarier by the minute."

The glittering man laughed. "As if that would work with Darcy", he cried out and Lizzie didn't really get the punchline of that joke.

"I still have a question for you, doctor", she changed topics, pirouetting under his outstretched arm.

"Everything, little butterfly."

"This getup..." She pointed at the glitter, the bow tie, the eyeliner.

"Yes?"

"Does that mean that I nearly slept with a gay man?", she asked him curiously. "Because normally my radar works without fault."

He laughed. "Oh, Papillon, you're adorable!", he cried out. "But believe me...", he leaned down until their noses were nearly touching. "I'm everything, Papillon. Everything, but decided."

He let her go for a second only to catch her again immediately. "I think we'll have a lot of fun together", he said and it sounded like a promise. "A _lot_ of fun."

After a couple of dances Lizzie's feet began to ache and under the additional threat of a rather determined looking Catherine DeBourgh, who was storming in their direction, they escaped with their champagne flutes into the conservatory.

"Please, tell me again...", Lizzie repeated. "How is it possible that the dictator is your aunt? I mean, I've always suspected narcissistic tendencies when it comes to Darcy, but that's a whole different ballpark..."

"There are many theories", Fitzwilliam said. "But the most common one is the _abducted-by-aliens-and-had-her-brain-fried_-theory."

"Funny", Lizzie said, closing the doors to the conservatory behind them. "I always call Darcy an alien."

"Because of the arrogance or the delayed facial expressions?", the glittering man asked, giving Lizzie her glass back.  
"Both", she said. "But mostly because he doesn't get my jokes."

"I can hear you, Miss Bennet", a deep voice suddenly sounded from the other side of the conservatory, where a couple of chairs surrounded a round table. She saw Darcy's figure as a harsh shadow against the dim light; he was sitting in one of those chairs, a glass of water on the table next to him. "And I assure you, I do understand your jokes, Miss Bennet. But sometimes they are just not as funny as you think them to be.

"Is he drunk?", Lizzie whispered to Fitzwilliam, whose eyes were sparkling in the semi-dark.

"Darcy doesn't drink", he whispered back, shaking his head as if she'd just said something incredibly stupid.

She snorted. "I know that. But did anybody ever think about checking if the clear liquid really is water? He could be drinking Vodka the entire time and no one would notice."

"Lizzie, Lizzie...", Fitzwilliam chuckled and patted her arm. "Now is not the time for paranoid little conspiracy theories, darling."

"It's just water, Miss Bennet", Darcy called out, raising his glass. "You can try it if you want."

"No thank you", Lizzie replied, sitting down on the chair next to him. Fitzwilliam took the third one. "I'm good."

"I see", the Professor replied, eyeing the champagne flute with a frown on his face. His cousin chuckled lightly, pulling out a packet of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his tuxedo.

"You want one?", he asked her, but Lizzie shook her head vehemently. "Goodness, no", she cried out. "I've had enough of them over the holidays."

He gazed at her with sympathy, lighting one for himself. "The celebration of Christian love bearing such horror for you, Papillon?", he asked, blowing out the smoke.

"Unbearable", Lizzie said in the same tone. "Without my good friend Jack I probably would have jumped out of the window."

She raised her aching feet to pull off her shoes. She sighed softly when they finally hit the floor.

"Ah!", Fitzwilliam cried out. "Alcohol and suicide. The best ingredients for every sitcom. I _love_ it!"

"But that's Mc Donald's now", Lizzie replied, slowly rolling her right stocking down her leg. "Even though that's indeed a bit suicidal."

"Oh!", Fitzwilliam looked at her with wide, sparkling eyes. "Darcy, she got my joke! Can I marry her? Oh please, please, _please_!"

"Get sober, Fitzwilliam", Darcy grunted, making Lizzie giggle.

She began rolling down her left stocking and it didn't escape her how Darcy's eyes were following her every movement like burning points on her skin and when she looked up she thought his eyes had become – if possible – even darker.

"But she gets my jokes", Fitzwilliam whined. "Nobody gets my jokes!"

"You make too many of them."

"And she's pretty. And intelligent!", he cried out, while Lizzie giggled softly. "I want to keep her. Can I keep her? Oh please, please, Darcy!"

"Fitzwilliam, you said the same thing about the turtle at the pet shop last week", Darcy retorted, taking a sip of his water.

Lizzie shot the glittering man a glare. "You compare me to a turtle?", she asked him, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand.

"Pssht", he said. "Darcy, look at her. She's sexy. She wears High Heels."

"High Heels, which are cutting off the blood circulation in my feet", Lizzie lamented, slowly moving her toes. Something cracked.

"I asked you once before why you do that to yourself", Darcy said quietly, while Fitzwilliam was watching the two of them in delight.

"And I already gave you good advice on that front, didn't I?", she retorted and he smiled.

"You did, Miss Bennet. You did."

They were both staring at each other and Fitzwilliam was induced to say something, but then the nagging voice of a woman sounded from inside the ballroom.

"Richard Fitzwilliam!", she screeched and all three of them winced at the sound. "Where are you, you ungrateful boy? Come here this instant!"

Fitzwilliam screwed up his face and stood up. "I'll go and see what the old biddy wants this time." He sighed. "Probably criticizing my outfit again."

"I can't imagine what her problem would be", Lizzie said with a smile, which Fitzwilliam returned.

"Oh I know why I love you, Papillon", he said, kissing her hand. "You're enchanting, my dear."

"Richard!", the shrill voice of the dictator screeched again.

"I'm on my way, my lovely companions." He bowed. "Take good care of our fair maiden, dear knight, while I try to slay this dragon", he addressed Darcy. "And we'll see each other at the crack of dawn", he said to Lizzie before he bowed one last time and disappeared through the door frame.

And then they were alone.

The silence was tense, buzzing with electricity. It made her head spin.

Lizzie stood up, taking her champagne flute with her, tip toeing on bare feet to the middle of the room, where she slowly began to spin in circles to the sound of the barely audible music in the flickering light from the ballroom.

She closed her eyes, feeling his gaze, his eyes upon her, raising her glass like a conductor's baton. Slowly, back and forth. Losing, _losing_, losing one's self, coming apart, coming undone, _dissolving_ in time to the music as if letting go was just a piece of art.

As if it was _easy_.

She tilted her head to the side, took a sip,_ felt, felt, felt_ his eyes on her, his proximity on her skin - magnetic, toxic - and she wanted and wanted and -

_There_. Fingers over silk. Fingers over her skin.

Proximity, breathing, things, that were driving her crazy. Citrons and cigarettes even though he didn't smoke.

"You still owe me a dance, Miss Bennet."

She opened her eyes, staring directly into his. Dark and piercing, those two dots of colour haunting her ever since that morning in his apartment.

"I said, we'd dance _tomorrow_", she replied, nearly whispering it, because his proximity, his hands on her hips, the alcohol in her blood were just too much.

"It's tomorrow", he said, smiling softly in the semi-dark. "It's past midnight."

She smiled, faintly, bitterly. "That doesn't make it tomorrow."

"One could argue about that", he whispered and then his head was next to hers, his right cheek pressed against her left and she could barely contain the sob in her throat, because for the first time in weeks she didn't feel like she was falling apart on the inside.

Because he was the one holding her.

She grabbed his wrist, pulling it from her body, looking at him with shimmering, emerald green eyes and she felt the warmth suffusing her body, but she shook it of with a shake of her head.

"We're not talking about it?", she asked, the pain masterfully hidden behind the mask. "Jane, Charlie... your sudden departure?"

He gazed at her, furrowing his brow. "What's left to say about that, Lizzie? I -"

"No." She interrupted him, pushing his hands off her body. She took a step backwards. "Not like that."

Lizzie shook her head, feeling the hole in her chest starting to tear up again. She grabbed her stockings, but only found one shoe.

"I have to go", she said, thrusting her champagne flute into his hand. "Midnight, the clock's ticking, the carriage is a pumpkin."

"But your shoe..."

She smiled faintly, cautiously, with shimmering eyes. "Then you'll have to give it back to me, should you find it", she whispered before making her way over to the door.

"And Darcy..." She turned around to face him, holding onto the door frame for balance while her body was swaying. "_Tomorrow_ was four weeks ago", she whispered before crossing the ballroom on bare feet, over to the entrance, where Collins was waiting for her to take her home.

The ball was over.

* * *

**A/N: I love this chapter. I seriously love it. The idea for Richard came when I was watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show around Halloween and I just stared at the screen (in a room full of people, mind you) internally shouting "Yes, Yes, fucking Yes!" (If you haven't seen the movie at least watch the part to "Sweet Transvestite" if you want to have an idea about Richard's... movements) He's part Frank'n Further, part Jack Sparrow and a bit of my friend's crazy boyfriend;)  
**

**As always, thanks to all those who read and review. I love you all very much;) Thanks for sticking with me. And remember: changed rating next time. **

**Greets, Teddy**


	23. Chapter 22 Light Bulbs

**A/N: So I'm back from the dead! I'm sorry it took so long but finals were so crazy that I even learned neurobiology vocabulary in church at my brother's confirmation. Which was highly entertaining in its own way. And no. I wasn't struck by a lightning. Which was disappointing because I soo counted on it. **

**But whatever. I'm back. And I have a blog! You can find me under theo-la-dora dot tumblr dot com (just replace the dots with actual ones), the link is also on my profile page. Title is: A Journal of Bones. I'm currently collecting pictures and music and gifs to the different chapters and once I get to the current chapter it will be more of a random collection of thoughts during writing process so that you don't have to despair and think I dropped off the face of the planet from time to time. Which does happen.**

**Secondly: M Rating from this chapter on. Not for actual content, but, you know, for the path we're taking here. And I don't want to have to think twice about writing the word boob at some random moment when it might be necessary. Because it's fun to write. Boobs. More like a misspelled man's name. **

**Disclaimer: I don't think Austen would have been able to talk about her underwear without blushing like a fire engine. So, dup, that's mine. But the light bulb jokes are not. I stole them. You can find them online. **

**Soundtrack:**

** Gleaming Auction - Snow Patrol**

**Somewhere A Clock is Ticking - Snow Patrol**

**The Winning Side - The Airborne Toxic Event **

**This Loosing - The Airborne Toxic Event: **

* * *

**Chapter 22: Light bulbs  
**

"And they really have no idea where Craig might be?", Lizzie Bennet repeated for perhaps the thirty-third time that morning while pushing past people on the escalator moving in the general direction of air and light and the traffic chaos around the underground station _Victoria_.

"No", she heard Anne's sigh through the mobile phone and her grip on her backpack tightened even more, all the while throwing _Excuse-me_'s and _I'm sorry_'s like sweets on carnival left and right at the people around her. "Like I said, he's dropped off the face of the earth."

"But how's that even possible?", Lizzie asked with a frown when the escalator reached its destination and the cold February air struck her in the face. "Lecture period started again four weeks ago. He would've had to give notice in order not to fail this semester, right?"

Anne sighed softly and Lizzie knew the sound well enough to stop dead in her tracks in the middle of a bunch of news vendors, who sniffed their chance and begun pestering her with offers.

Lizzie ignored them. "Anne?", she asked, her voice strained. "Anne, what's up?"

Again a sigh. "They weren't sure", she finally said. "Lizzie, the thing is -"

"Anne", Lizzie said menacingly and continued her way through the crowds on the pavement. "What. Is. It?"

"Lizzie, they weren't sure if Craig was actually still enrolled for the semester", Anne explained. "Let alone if he's still enrolled at all."

"They think he dropped out?", Lizzie cried out, the shock clearly audible in her voice.

"Some of them", Anne said quickly, sensing that Lizzie was close to loosing it. "One of his friends said that he still attended classes at the beginning of the semester, but apparently he didn't do any work at all and when one of the lecturers asked him about his progress, rumour has it that he threw his laptop out of the window and bolted."

Lizzie snorted. "And you believe that shit? You know as well as I do how much Craig loves his little gadgets. He'd consider throwing them out of a window a mortal sin." She was laughing, but it sounded strained and Anne wasn't fooled.

"Lizzie, you saw the boxes", she interjected quietly. "Those weren't just a few pills he got from the redcoats -"

"Anne, you don't -", Lizzie started, harshly pushing past the people crowding the pavement. It smelled like coffee and bagels and her stomach growled. Having spent the weekend at the Groveland's home in the suburbs didn't allow for a short journey to the hospital this Monday and breakfast hadn't seemed like a good idea at five o'clock in the morning, which was something she regretted now.

"Oxycodone, Lizzie. A strong, semi-synthetic opioid, highly addictive and normally used as a narcotic analgesic. It induces feelings of euphoria, relaxation and reduced anxiety and -"

"Did you inhale Wikipedia?", Lizzie asked, but the joke was only meant half serious and did little to soothe her own nerves.

"No, Lizzie, I'm trying to remind you of what they taught you in your classes before you finish building that insane wall in your head, that tells you that it's next to _impossible_ that Craig could have a problem. I _know_ you, Lizzie."

"Anne..." She sighed, but it had always been bloody difficult to lie to Anne when she called you out on it.  
"Hydrocodone", Anne replied, her voice hard. "In combination with paracetamol known under the name Vicodin, it's used to relieve moderate to severe pain and is highly addictive due to its euphoriant effects. Lizzie! You know that!"

"Yes", she whispered. "Shit, yes!" She stomped her foot, bit her lip. "Of course I know that. Shit. Shit. _Shit_!"

"Those were all in those aspirin boxes", Anne said softly. "The ones you hid in the lavatory cistern. Lizzie, you saw the pills."

"I saw them", Lizzie whispered, her head spinning and she remembered the day she'd turned his whole apartment upside down looking for hints, for something, anything and how she'd pulled the dripping plastic bag from the cistern with trembling hands, only to discover that the pills in the boxes were no aspirin.

"What are we going to do now?", Lizzie forced herself to ask, swallowing down those unwelcome emotions. She needed a clear head. Now more than ever.

"We're expanding our search to include hospitals", Anne explained, her natural pragmatism taking over. "Mus is already busy on the phone. The Ferrars and Dashwoods are okay with calling him instead of the police if someone with Craig's description shows up in their A&amp;Es, meaning that we've covered a good part of Northern Ireland with that."

"What about the phone cascade?", Lizzie asked, now again hurrying down the street. It was February and the wind was bloody cold. She saw her breath in a white cloud in front of her face.

"It's working, but no results so far. Same goes for those Facebook posts. Gracious, I never thought I'd visit that site voluntarily!"

"Wonders will never cease", Lizzie muttered, eliciting a soft chuckle from Anne.

"Did you talk to his family again?"

"Yes", Lizzie snorted humourlessly. "They claim that they've got no idea where he might be. That was before one of his brother's took the phone to tell me that real men don't have to answer to women for their actions." She rolled her eyes. "Subsequently I called him a chauvinistic asshole for the third time in two days and hung up."

"What a salad", Anne sighed. "I wish there was at least some dressing on it."

Lizzie laughed a bit bitterly while passing the entrance to the grounds of Rosings Hospital. "It would definitely taste better", she then said, walking up the carefully paved path to the hospital, which looked more like a palace than a functional building.

"And you don't remember anything he said, that might be helpful?", Anne asked for the thousandth time and Lizzie tried not to roll her eyes in annoyance.

"No", she said, trying to remain calm. "I only know that he was in a bit of a strange mood, but honestly Anne, I wasn't that... _clear_ in my head."

"You were baked", the ambergirl said dryly.

"I wanted to say 'emotionally confounded'", Lizzie retorted, the cold winter air blowing through her skin.

"At least you admit that part", Anne replied and sighed. "It might just be helpful to know if he planned this whole thing or if it was a last-minuted decision."

"Or not his decision at all", Lizzie muttered gloomily. "That family is creeping me the fuck out. His mother said in all honesty that she'd pray for him. _Pray_! And not in that doting grandmother kind of way, no, she said it like it was a threat. She practically _threatened_ to pray for him."

"That's rather frightening", Anne said. "I'm just wondering why he went home for Christmas at all. Usually he spends the holidays with us or with some of his buddies, right?"

"His father gave him an ultimatum", Lizzie spit out bitterly. "Either he came home for the holidays or they would cut their financial support."

"That's absolutely...", Anne struggled for words.

"Fucked up?", Lizzie completed her sentence. "My opinion too, darling." She shook her head before suddenly stopping dead in her tracks when an image came to mind. "He gave me his coat", she whispered.

"Pardon me?" Anne sounded worried.

"He gave me his coat", Lizzie repeated tonelessly. "He said it was good for hiding and that he didn't need it anymore. That it was useless for him."

"Shit!", Anne cried out and it was so absolutely unusual for the ambergirl to curse that Lizzie nearly jumped in the air in shock. "Why didn't you tell me earlier, Lizzie? Oh, fuck!"

"Anne?", she asked shakily with the sinking feeling that something was absolutely wrong. "Do you think that he -"

"I don't know", Anne said harshly and Lizzie's stomach felt as if it had made a dive on bare asphalt.

She heard the ambergirl fighting for air. "No", Anne then said and it sounded like she was trying to convince herself foremost. "No, it can't be." She breathed in. In and out. "Let's concentrate on finding him, alright? We'll worry about the rest when the time comes."

"And what if -"

"Let's not think about it, okay? We'll find him", Anne announced with more confidence in her voice than she probably felt at the moment. "And if we have to go to Ireland and turn around every single stone on our own."

"Okay", Lizzie said, trying to breathe into her diaphragm in order not to hyperventilate. "Okay, we can do this. The twins still occupied with the online-search?"

"Yeah, they kind of set off an avalanche. Something about shared posts and reaching as many people in Ireland as possible." She sighed. "I don't know much about that stuff, but they tell me it's very effective."

"It is", Lizzie said dryly, quickening her pace – getting out of the biting cold was a welcome option at the moment.

"And I called every single hostel or cheap hotel, I could find in the greater cities around his home-town, but so far nothing -"

"Did you try homeless shelters?", Lizzie asked, her voice hard. "If he... if those pills.. He could've run out of money and -"

"I'll try", Anne promised her and it felt like it was killing her that Craig sleeping under a bridge was even an option.  
"Thanks", Lizzie whispered. "It's driving me fucking crazy that I can't do more and that you have to do all the work -"

"Hey, you're working crazy hours in a hospital and the twins and I don't have anything better to do."

"You're working on your doctorate degree, Anne. Or at least that's what you're supposed to do, but instead -" Anne didn't let her finish.

"I'm grateful for every second I don't have to spend with some statistics program, you know that, darling. Besides Wentworth is-"  
"She's what?", Lizzie asked aghast. "Please don't tell that she's -"

"Coffee?", a voice asked and the sudden interruption threw her so out of concept that for a few moments she just stared at the hand holding a cup of coffee under her nose, not recognizing the voice until her eyes travelled upwards and she discovered a head of dark hair over warm, dark glowing eyes instead of the usual mix of blond hair and blue eyes.

_Darcy_.

"I call you back", she said tersely into the phone, cutting off Anne's erratic half-excuses consisting off haphazardly connected pieces of sentences before she hung up.

All without breaking eye contact.

"Where's Richard?", Lizzie asked, staring at the cup he held out to her as if it was an apple from the tree of knowledge before her eyes flew back to his.

"Stuck in a conference", Darcy replied, furrowing his brow. She felt dizzy all of a sudden.  
"How interesting", she said, looking at the cup as if it could bite her any moment. "What's that?"

"Coffee", Darcy said, looking from Lizzie to the cup and back again. "Hot water mixed with the powder of roasted coffee beans, partly mixed with foamed milk... One of the most popular beverages in the western world." He shrugged and she suppressed the smile, that threatened to consume her face. "You know... Coffee."

"Your opinion or the Wikipedia article on that topic?", she asked him dryly. "Are you even old enough to drink this?", she added. "We don't want auntie to get her panties in a twist, do we?"

He sighed, holding the cup under her nose, which she was still sizing up like a sleeping dragon ready to pounce at any moment.

"You know that it's not poisoned, Lizzie, right?", he asked her, slightly amused and she scowled at him as if she couldn't believe that he had the nerve to disregard her name decree so easily.

He simply raised an eyebrow.

"That's what they all say", Lizzie grunted, taking the cup and sniffing at it. "And then you go and wake up the next morning in some strange bed, that's good for anything but sleeping, with some kind of furry animal on your tongue and without -" She bit her lip in time to stop herself from spilling out that last sordid detail, but when she looked up, his raised eyebrow had – if even possible – travelled up his forehead even higher.

"ID!", she cried out, raising her hands in the air as if she'd just solved the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle on her own.

"ID?", Darcy repeated with a mix of scepticism and sarcasm. "Does that happen often?"

"More often than one might think", Lizzie replied. "Aren't they all chasing after those?"

"After IDs?", he asked dryly and she wanted to elbow him in the side, but physical contact was a concept she tried to avoid these days when sober.

It complicated things too much.

"Of course", she said seriously while they were both making their way through the oversized front doors. "Never heard of identity theft?"

"Don't they steal credit cards for that purpose?", Darcy asked, opening the last door for her.

Lizzie scowled. "Well, too bad. I don't have any of these."

She heard him chuckle softly and it irritated her. "Why do I get the strange feeling that somehow this accusation is aimed at my person?"

Lizzie snorted. "Typical narcissist. If the world stops revolving around you, you're all going to collapse."

"And this idea seems plausible, because...?", he asked, following her with long strides through the entrance hall, which looked like the foyer of some five star hotel.

She turned around halfway, letting her gaze wander up and down his body. Darcy was already wearing the obligatory scrubs, dark blue for consultants, under the usual white doctor's coat. She averted her eyes from the small patch of skin where his collarbones met and she remembered this place, the way it made him look human now that there were no collars or ties obscuring it.

She swallowed and her eyes fell to his feet.

He wore sneakers.

Lizzie shook her head, reminding herself that even if the aliens had exchanged his personality to fit the situation, it didn't make him human. Not at all.

"Surgeon. Doctor. Physician. Psychopath", she explained, pressing the button to summon the elevator. Rosings was a goddamn labyrinth and as Richard had explained it to her, there was more than one skeleton of unfortunate souls, who didn't make it out alive, hidden in the corners of this old castle. "Choose one", she said, brushing him off. "They all fit."

He snorted. "Aren't you the one doing an internship here?", he asked and she could practically hear the raised eyebrow in his voice.

"And he's intelligent!", she cried out in mock enthusiasm, raising her cup into the air and she swore, _swore_ she saw a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "But no", she then said and her face fell back into an expression of neutral disinterest. "I haven't put on my scrubs yet", she explained. "My soul isn't yet burning in purgatory."

Darcy frowned just when the elevator doors opened with a faint "Ping" and released a bunch of people into the entrance hall.

"So the difference consists of our different kinds of clothing?", he asked derisively. "Kudos, Elizabeth, you found a solution for every personality disorder listed in the ICD! Let's just forget about psychotropic drugs, psychotherapy and all that and concentrate on our styles of clothing."

Lizzie snorted, leaning against the mirrored wall of the elevator with her coffee in hand. "I bet you could persuade people to buy fair-trade-products that way."

Darcy looked at her sceptically and she felt the corners of her mouth twitch in amusement. But no, she forced herself back under control, laughing would mean giving into the devil, into temptation.

"Elizabeth..."

"Did I tell you that I really don't like your way of address?", she asked him with her head tilted to the side and a provocative lift of her chin.

"And did I tell you that I really don't care?", he shot back, arms crossed in front of his chest. He was leaning against the opposite wall in the same forced casual, I-don't-fucking-care-way Lizzie did and she squinted her eyes and glared at him.

He laughed.

"So, why am I a narcissist as a doctor and you're not? Because in about twenty minutes you'll be wearing the same things if you don't want to let Lady Catherine see you like this."

"Ah, psssht", Lizzie brushed it off. "I could show up in one of Richard's little outfits and DeBourgh would still kiss my ass in hopes of getting me to sell my soul to her."

"You really like the devil-metaphor, don't you?", Darcy asked and the expression on his face was almost playful.

"Never change a winning horse", Lizzie said casually. "Don't tell me you didn't think about it before."

"So now you're a mind reader, too?"

"Didn't you know?" They stared at each other until Darcy's smile broke the tension and Lizzie averted her gaze.

"You still didn't answer my question", he insisted and she felt the irritation rising within her, felt he waves licking at her.

"What's with the twenty questions today?", she evaded. "Are you three or thirty, Darcy?"

"Thirty-two", he replied with a faint smile.

"Those two years really do make a difference", she commented, her eyes fixed on the illuminated display over the elevator doors while number after number appeared and disappeared and she waited for it to reach her floor.

"Elizabeth...", he warned her and she grinned lightly, her face partially hidden from him.

"You do know that I don't answer to that name, right?"

"Is that chronic or simply limited to me?", he retorted.

"Hey, narcissism, nice to see you again!", Lizzie called out, rolling her eyes in mock annoyance. "Why do you think it's always about you?"

"Because I'm the only one you make exceptions for."

"And Good Morning, egoism!", she then said with a sigh. "You really got them all assembled, didn't you?"

"And on this note, I think you favourite word fits here quite nicely", he replied and the faint smile he directed at her sent goosebumps down her spine.

"Who's the mind reader now, Darcy?" She left her wall and made a step towards him. It felt like holding a magnet against metal.

And expect them not to collide.

He looked down at her, at the wild heap of barely tamed, dark brown hair, cheeks red from the cold air outside and her green eyes still heavy lidded from sleep.

"Tell me", he said with a smile and a spark in his eyes and she swallowed, breathed, trembled slightly.

"Feels like a Dejà-Vu, don't you think?", she whispered into the tension coiling around them like a electrically charged ribbon. "A bloody broken record."

"Some might call it a second chance", he said softly and with an expression in his eyes, Lizzie didn't understand.

She shook her head. "Second chance implies that there was a first one." She made a step back. "And a reason it didn't work."

Lizzie knew he was looking at her, knew that there was some fucked up kind of meaning behind his words, didn't know whether she should laugh or cry hysterically.

It was too _late_. _He_ was too late.

Her breathing sped up, the electrons, protons around her, the neurons in her brain were racing, buzzing, releasing strange neurotransmitter mixes in the wrong brain areas and she was more than relieved when the elevator doors sprang open with a soft "Pling".

Lizzie let out a breath when the tension broke and marched past Darcy into the hallway, but right before she left the elevator, she turned around, holding the doors open with one foot.

"The difference, Darcy", she raised her chin and under the harsh neon light the shadows under her eyes seemed to sink even deeper into her skin, "is that as soon as I've finished med school and my residency, I'm out of here faster than you can say "knife". Got it?"

He looked at her with a frown, but she somehow thought that his focus was more on her appearance than on her words. His eyes flickered over her face and then downwards and she could barely escape his hand when he stretched it out, missing her face by inches.

"You're too thin", he said quietly and only with his foot hastily pushed forward was he able to keep the doors from closing, when she backed off abruptly.

"And you sound like my mother", she snorted, biting her tongue almost immediately as if she'd disclosed too much.

"Elizabeth..."

She shook her head and turned around. "Whatever, Darcy. Thanks for the coffee!", she called out, marching down the hallway with the cup raised high in the air in silent greeting.

"Where do you want to go?", he called after her and she didn't need to turn around or ask him for clarification to know what he meant.

"Africa", she yelled, taking a sip from the coffee in her hand and ripping her eyes open in wonder when the taste spread on her tongue.

_Hazelnut_.

* * *

Craig was missing for over four weeks now.

When Lizzie had come back from Lyme after New Year's Day together with Anne and the Grovelands, they'd found London as a battlefield upon their return, dominated by a hysterically crying Charlotte, around whom her fiancé was dancing like a scared up chicken, by the bomb-like impact of Lydia Bennet in her apartment, who declared it to be her new home and by the gaping emptiness of Craig's absence.

It had been like a firework out of control and while Anne had still been standing there, mouth agape, Charlotte's crying and Lydia's endless monologue in both their ears, Lizzie, her head spinning with emotions and impressions, had pushed the tranquillizers between Charlotte's teeth and forced her to swallow them before she'd packed the remaining stuff from her room in her old suitcase from five years ago and pushed past her sister without saying a word.

She'd moved in with Anne for the few remaining days until she'd been able to move into one of the small rooms, Rosings Hopsital offered their employees and she returned to the ambergirl's apartment for most weekends.

Lizzie didn't hate her sister. She just didn't know what to do with her. There were too many memories and too less actual time spent with her to have any idea how to handle her and the fact that Lydia was now in London sent her world view spinning like a fucking carousel.

The halting, monosyllabic conversation, she'd had to have with Jane over the phone after her silent move-out, didn't really help matters, because apparently Lydia had expected more from her move to London than a silent sister, who'd barely look at her. But Lizzie had taken Jane's reproaches almost stoically, hadn't said anything about her decision not to return to London, to stay in Meryton for the foreseeable future and had finally agreed, albeit reluctantly, to look after the apartment until Charlie would take it back in June.

Craig's absence however was something you couldn't come by, neither with pills nor with silence and it had taken them a while until Charlotte had calmed down enough to reconstruct the events or rather to piece together what hadn't happened, because no matter how one looked at it, the result was still the same.

Craig hadn't come back. And nobody had an idea where he might be.

A knock on the door ripped her out of her thoughts.

"How many gay men does it take to change a light bulb?", Richard Fitzwilliam's voice sounded from the entrance to the changing room, where Lizzie was in the process of tugging the pale blue top of her scrubs over her head, rhythmically drumming the medical chart in his hand against the door frame.

"Is that a rhetoric question?", Lizzie asked, her voice slightly muffled by the material. Richard's sudden appearance didn't surprise her in the least – the glittering man had the strange habit of appearing at even the most unusual places out of thin air and these days only the ladies' toilet was a safe place – for now.

"Five", Richard said with a melancholy sigh and sat down on the bench beside her. "One changes it, one holds the ladder, two open the champagne and the fifth one calls the ambulance."

"How uninspired", Lizzie commented after having finally gotten her head through the tight collar of her shirt, blinking into the pale morning light coming in from the windows, illuminating the blonde mess on Richard's head like a halo.

"That's what I said!", he called out promptly, an expression of acute outrage on his face before sighing again. "And he was such a pretty boy … _man_... whatever:"

Lizzie smirked. "Trying to justify yourself, Richard?", she asked while trying to get her wild hair into some sort of messy bun on top of her head.

"Darling, you know I gave up such a thing a long time ago", he said with a sigh, but smiled.

"Then what was he?", she asked. "Your bed-fellow, I suppose? Boy or man?"

"An angel", Richard sighed. "Such a pretty face and a body like an Adonis... hmm", he licked his lips, "...and such an empty head." He shook his head in disappointment.

"Don't tell me you kicked him out of your bed!", Lizzie scolded him, hands perched up on her hips.

Richard smiled mischievously. "Like you did with Darcy?", he retorted at which Lizzie shot him her death glare.

He didn't seem to think it very impressive, because he laughed out loudly and patted her arm. "The little angel made it even worse", he continued. "Because when I wouldn't show any kind of reaction to his first joke and he apparently thinks himself to be quite the comedian, he actually asked me how many doctors it would take to change a light bulb."

Richard pouted when Lizzie started giggling madly. "I knew that one", she gasped.

"Me too", the formally glittering man, which she almost hadn't recognized in his normal attire consisting of scrubs, sneakers and wild, glitter-free hair the morning after the Welcome-party, said before crossing his legs delicately and inspecting his fingernails. "I silently pointed at the front door. He got the hint."

"At least something he understood", Lizzie chuckled, lacing up her sneakers.

Richard nodded, his lips pursed in a failed imitation of Queen Elizabeth. "It only takes one by the way", he said conversationally.

"I know."

"But he needs a nurse to tell him which end to screw in", Richard explained with a raised index finger and she thought to have detected some pink nail polish. Usually the glittering man behaved in the hospital when it came to his choice of clothes – he called it a necessary concession to his job and aunt – but sometimes. Just sometimes she was pretty sure to see just a flash of lace under his scrubs, to detect and earring or an interesting shade of nail polish and then she'd smile and shake her head, elbow him as if it was their own little secret.

"I _kno-o-o-ow_!", Lizzie sang and rolled her eyes.

"And I know the colour of your underwear, Papillon", Richard teased her, standing up with a clap of his hands.

Lizzie groaned. "Oh please, by all that is holy, please not!"

"Oh, of course, little butterfly." He tugged on the messy bun on top of her head. "Chartreuse yellow with pink polka dots?" He grinned. "Cute."

"Richard!"

"But not as enticing as the bright red version with the black lace trim from last Friday", Richard sing-songed, dancing towards the door with Lizzie on his heels. "It nearly sent Darcy into cardiac arrest when he saw that."

"When did he see that for fucks sake?", Lizzie cried out, shocking one of the nurses, who was hastily passing by. Richard, now fearing for his life and balls, got himself into a safe distance from her. "Richard!"

"Don't scrunch your nose, Miss Hello-Kitty-undies. It'll give you wrinkles!"

"Richard!" She poked her elbow in between his ribs. "How do blonds try to change light bulbs?"

He groaned. "You're trying to start a revolution, Papillon?"

Lizzie groaned broadly. "She holds the light bulb against the socket and expects the world to revolve around her."

Richard grunted. "Complete blood count and CT, Papillon." He thrust the patient's chard into her hands. "And don't you dare remind me of that incident ever again", he said indignantly, marching down the hallway away from Lizzie with one hand rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I still see his face", he muttered. "What a stupid, _stupid_ angel."

Lizzie laughed. "They're seldom paid for their intelligence, Richard!", she called after him, resulting in a rather withering glare and she heard him muttering something about red underwear with bows before turning around the corner and disappearing from her field of view.

Meanwhile, Lizzie bounced through the hallways, whistling happily while collecting lab reports and bringing patients to radiology and back and all the while managing to avoid meeting either Darcy or the devil of an English aristocrat, who was roaming the hallways like an unleashed hound of hell hunting a bone.

Or with other words: Lizzie.

But Lizzie, who in the meantime had developed some sort of sick pleasure at this kind of cat-and-mouse-game, had no intention of ever letting the bulldog win and these days it was more some kind of running gag between her and Collins, who DeBourgh was using as a messenger, where he gave her a bunch of papers including the current proposal and she made a big show of inspecting each and every single page and finally transform them into something more useful.

It was Richard's highlight of the day.

"How many doctors does it take to change a light bulb?", Lizzie repeated Richard's greeting from the same morning when she caught up with him at one of the desks on the paediatric station not much later that day, holding the lab reports including cards under his nose.

He wrinkled his nose. "The joke isn't getting any funnier, much like the number of doctors isn't increasing", he declared indignantly, brushing a few errand strands of hair out of his face.

Lizzie just grinned and poked him in the side. "You're wrong", she informed him with a brilliant smile.

He looked up. "May I remind you of that little ensemble with those cute cherry prints?", he asked haughtily. "Or the SpongeBob—SquarePants panties with the starfish on the crotch?" He raised an eyebrow. "Those are all on the list of things I'm willing to disclose given the right kind of payment."

Her gaze darkened considerably and she smashed the chard against his head before a smug smile appeared on her lips again. "Three", she then said cryptically.

He groaned. "Purple lace? Black cotton panties? Dinosaur undies?", he cried out in near desperation, making his way down the hallways, closely followed by Lizzie.

"One to find a light-bulb specialist. Another one to find a specialist for changing light-bulbs and the third one to mail the bill to your insurance company", she practically sang while Richard pressed both hands against his ears.

"Red and white striped bra, neon green lace, blue boy-shorts", the blonde man recited as if it was some kind of mantra and Lizzie, with a devilish smile on her lips, tugged at his arms to free his ears.

"How many doctors does it take to change a light-bulb, Richard?", she whispered with a giggle.

Richard groaned. "Three?", he asked resignedly.

Lizzie shook her head. "Wrong", she whispered, letting go of his arm. "Not one!", she cried out, dancing down the hallway. "The light bulb should take two aspirin and come back in the morning."

She heard his outcry for sky-blue cotton underwear and grinned.

The game continued for the rest of the morning while walking from room to room to visit Richard's little patients and they'd reached the letter "L" by lunchtime (how many light-bulbs does it take to change one? Answer: Two), but it was rather tame compared to Lizzie's first day at Rosings when Richard had listed every single sexual practice he'd ever tried in between patient visits and they hadn't even reached the letter "C" by midday, at which point Lizzie had hidden behind a confused looking Darcy with wide eyes and looking rather perturbed, she'd stammered something about pictures she'd never get out of her mind again.

Compared to that, Richards constant reciting of her undergarment preferences was nothing.

"White cotton with flowers, pink pinstriped bra", he listed last Monday's outfit while standing in the line for the salad buffet and the cafeteria lady with the hair net and the sour expression on her face, who was standing behind the counter and watching everything, glared at him.

Lizzie just nodded absently while covering her salad with yoghurt dressing. She'd just gotten off the phone with Anne, who'd told her about the developments in their search for Craig but there wasn't much to discuss, not much hope to feast on. The hospitals in Northern Ireland had no records on someone fitting Craig's description and the numerous facebook-posts had brought some results, but the last sighting of him was vague and had happened over two weeks ago.

Two weeks. The thought made her stomach churn and she felt the guilt dragging at her bones and muscles. How could she have been so egoistical, so downright uncaring that she'd more or less forgotten about him over the whole _Christmas-in-Meryton_-fiasco? They'd always saved each other … had silently promised each other not to leave the other alone ever again.

"Red lace bra!", Richard cried out that moment as if it was the conclusion to a very, very long list and started pirouetting with the tray in hand. The spaghetti-salad-tower on his plate was wobbling dangerously.

"Do I want to know how he knows that?", a very familiar voice sounded and when she looked up from the dressing fiasco on her plate, she saw Darcy with a frown on his face watching an ecstatic Richard transform the list of her underwear combinations of the past week into some kind of Disney-ballade.

Lizzie furrowed her brow, feeling a slowly pounding ache working its way from one temple through her temporal- and frontal lobe to the other side. "No, you don't", she hissed, dragging a still dancing Richard to the next buffet table.

"Oh Papillon", the blond man chided her, pursing his lips in disapproval. "You sure that's healthy?"

"What?", Lizzie asked in confusion, her thoughts still with Craig and the fake aspirin boxes. She looked up from the salad chaos on her plate with a side of potatoes to eye Richard questioningly. "That's salad. Of course it's healthy."

Richard shook his head, acute disbelief written plainly on his face. "I'm talking about Darcy, Papillon."

A bit puzzled she cast a glance at her former professor, who was filling his plate just a few tables down. He still wore sneakers. "He's eating salad, too", she said confused while absently waving her hand as if to brush it off.

Richard's mouth popped open. "He's eating salad, too?", he repeated. "_Salad_? Darling, do you plan on killing him one of these days?"

She looked down at her plate. "With salad?", she asked. "Should I try to choke him with it?"

"Choke him?", Richard repeated, shaking his head before a mischievous smile appeared on his lips. "Oh alright, darling. I just know how you can choke him."

He positioned her so that the professor was right in her field of view and then stole a glance under her top, snapping a bra strap in the process. "Chartreuse yellow with pink dots!", he cried out like he did that morning to the utter bemusement of the rest of the staff.

"Was that really necessary?", Lizzie grumbled. "You knew the colour without partially undressing me."

Richard grinned. "Yeah, but Darcy didn't, Papillon." He nodded towards his cousin, who was watching them with a face like stone.

Lizzie frowned, righting the strap of her bra. "Perhaps he doesn't like salad."

Richard started laughing and patted her shoulder a bit condescendingly. "That's probably it, Papillon."

Lizzie sighed and looked around. "Ed and Maddie still not here?", she asked conversationally while making their way over to Collins, who was sitting on one of the tables scattered across the cafeteria, completely engrossed in a number of reports and all the while trying to do the blind-eating thing with his salad. He failed miserably.

"Nah", Richard said, holding out the chair for Lizzie. "I believe I saw them in the store room on the third floor around noon. Very vocal and rather explicit that blue-haired smurf, I tell you."

Lizzie groaned and shook her head. "Those two will never understand the concept of hygiene in a hospital." She sighed and turned to face Collins. "Do you got some craft stuff for me?", she asked, suddenly excited and Rumpelstiltskin, his glasses foggy, his mouth full, smiled and dropped his fork to hastily grab some pages for her. "There", he stammered, a bit of lettuce still in his mouth. "She has great hopes for this one."

"Thank you!" Lizzie beamed, reaching for the stack of papers like an excited pre-school kid, which had Richard in stitches like most days.

"What's in it for you today, Papillon?", the blonde man asked while putting chips into his mouth. Lizzie turned the pages in her hand.

"Two years", she then said nonchalantly, lifting both eyebrows. "And oh... _Nice_." She eyed the five-digit number, which was offered as a monthly salary. "She outdid herself yet again. If I use this wisely, it might be enough to support my secret drug addiction."

"Drugs, Miss Bennet?" The well-known, pain-in-the-ass voice sounded yet again, but instead of looking up, Lizzie just shot Richard a glance and continued to skim the pages unaffectedly. "We really should get him some kind of bell", she mused, tapping her index finger against her chin. "One of these days he's going to give someone a coronary."

Richard giggled while Collins' eyes widened in panic. "I... I'm sure that's not Dr. Darcy's intent", he stammered, his eyes flittering from Lizzie to Darcy, who sat down beside Richard. Lizzie shot him a glance behind her paper stack.

"Sar- Sarcasm?", Rumpelstiltskin babbled, righting his glasses.

"Sarcasm, Collins."

Lizzie laid down the papers and started folding them into paper swans, much like she did every second day with DeBourgh's job proposals.

"What's the rate today?", Darcy wanted to know, finding Lizzie glaring at him over her half-finshed swan figure and a dissected potato. He smiled slightly and shook his head rather firmly.

"I'm not a dog, Miss Bennet."

She pouted. "It would make things sooo much easier", she said. "A little, teeny-tiny bell and I bet the number of coronary attacks in this hospital would decrease significantly.

"He also wouldn't find anyone anymore", it came bubbling out of Collins. "Lady Catherine did try it with me herself. 'Collins', she said, 'do not sneak up upon me! I need to know where you are at any given moment!' Then she hung the bell around my neck and suddenly no one was locatable!"

They all stared at him with expressions showing various degrees of shock while Collins' blood was rising in his cheeks. "I finally attached it to Lady Catherine's dog Annie", he explained to his rather flabbergasted audience with a barely there smile.

Richard was the first one to gather his wits and he patted Collins' back with a barking laugh while Lizzie and Darcy shook their heads in synchrony as if to get rid of the pictures in their minds.

"So, Papillon", Richard said. "Do you plan on getting Darcy into chains and leather anytime soon?"

This question brought both Lizzie and Collins on the verge of asphyxiation and while they were busy coughing and choking, the corners of Darcy's mouth only twitched slightly in amusement.

"Interesting. I thought you weren't into whips and chains, Miss Bennet", he said with a provocatively arched eyebrow, which Lizzie answered with another coughing fit since the lettuce leaf in her throat seemed to have taken the wrong way down. Collins patted her back tentatively.

"At least something you two talked about!", Richard called out, raising both hands in a silent prayer of thanks heavenwards. "Like I always say, limits and preferences have to be discussed clearly beforehand, otherwise it'll only end in tears and more red welts than you're comfortable with."

They all stared at Richard, who, not aware of the awkward silence at the table, simply went on and on. "For example, last Valentines-Day I wore my white Eros-costume and I met this really cute elf at one of these parties with a certain... _reputation_ and -"

Lizzie, who'd been forced to listen to the story more than one time, looked at Darcy with wide, pleading eyes, silently begging him to please put a stop on it.

"Fitzwilliam", he barked and the blonde man blinked rapidly and paused for a moment. "Eat your damn salad, Richard", Darcy ordered him. "I think we've thoroughly discussed Lizzie's lack of interest in BDSM-games." His gaze flickered towards Lizzie and she swore by all that is holy, the man fucking winked. He winked!

She glared at him and the bastard had the bloody nerve to grin crookedly, raise an eyebrow in provocation and eat a piece of potato with absolute relish.

Lizzie's eyes darkened and the swan in her hand crumpled into a rather pathetic looking duck.

"So what's the rate, Lizzie?", Darcy asked and she didn't know if it was the nonchalant use of her first name or the careless way he ate his potato, that made her want to strangle him.

She turned the bird figure around in her hand. "Five digits", she said finally. "A two year contract."

Darcy nodded in appreciation. "She's getting desperate."

"And you wouldn't believe me", Lizzie shot back with a defiant lift of her chin.

"That's what you're accusing me of?", he replied and chuckled. "You said you could show up here in one of Richard's skimpy outfits without risking her wrath."

Lizzie pursed her lips and turned the bird to one side. "Exhibit A." She turned it around and showed him the number printed there. "Exhibit B. That enough to convince you?"

"That you can do whatever you want?" Darcy shook his head in mock resignation. "Don't you do that already?"

Lizzie grinned broadly. "Finally he got it."

"And just for future reference", Richard chimed in, his fork held like a conductor's baton. "Nobody puts on any of my outfits." He looked menacingly at both Lizzie and for some strange reason Collins. "Those are _my_ outfits."

"And they'd look _sooo_ much better on me", Lizzie sang while folding swan number three.

"My. Outfits", Richard repeated between gritted teeth. "You got your chartreuse lace underwear. Make do with that."

"Uhh... Burn!", Lizzie cried out, leaning back in her chair. "How many professors does it take to change a light-bulb?"

"How comfortable are red lace thongs?", the blonde man countered, a chip dangling like a cigarette between his lips.

"Very comfortable", Lizzie replied with a straight face, while Collins' cheeks turned various interesting shades of red.

"And how many professors does it take?", Darcy asked, tilting his head to the side, which had Lizzie distracted for a moment or two.

She narrowed her eyes. "None to speak of", she said with more venom in her voice than consciously intended. "That's what students are for."

But instead of burning under her death glare like a bloody vampire in sunlight, Darcy simply raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Should I feel accosted?", he asked amusedly.

"No", she said expressionless and turned back to her paper swans. "You're not a professor anymore, are you?"

She felt Darcy's gaze on her, but she didn't look up. "No smart comment on the subject of blatant narcissism, Miss Bennet?", he asked and she heard the laugh in his voice.

She snorted and folded the neck of the bird. "How many egocentrics does it take to change a light-bulb?"

"One?"

She scowled. Darcy's lips contorted into a faint grin. "He stands on a table motionlessly and expects the world to revolve around him?"

"Your world, hmm?" She let the bird fly into Collins' salad.

"Your head", Darcy shot back, pointing at her with a fork. Her eyes narrowed.

"How many analytical philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?", she demanded to know, her arms crossed in front of her chest in the same fashion as Darcy.

"None." He smirked. "It's a pseudo-problem. The light-bulb glows to radiate light. If it's broken and does therefore not radiate light, it's not a light-bulb anymore, right?"

Her expression got sourer by the minute, but before she was able to say anything, Richard interrupted them with an outcry for pink latex.

Lizzie turned around to face him in irritation. "Latex? Really? I can't remember ever having put on latex. Don't you need Vaseline for that?"

Collins emitted a strange choking sound.

"Don't worry, Collins. I'm pretty sure Charlotte has one of those in her closet."

The squeaking reached a new octave.

"Oh Papillon, can't you let me dream?", Richard pouted.

Lizzie raised an eyebrow. "How many blondes do you need to -"

"No!" In utter desperation the blonde covered his ears and started banging his head against the edge of the table. "No, no, no!"

Lizzie grinned.

"You shouldn't encourage him", Darcy chimed in from the sidelines while watching Richard living out his drama with sceptical amusement.

"Encourage him? You think I'm encouraging him?", Lizzie asked horrified. "That's called self-preservation if you can't see it from your high horse up there."

Darcy raised an eyebrow. "He's reciting your underwear."

"And you're paying him for it", Lizzie retorted. "So who's encouraging him now?"

"I'm. _Paying_. Him?" The eyebrow wandered even higher on his forehead and Lizzie stared at him, the swan dangling half forgotten between her limp fingers, while Collins dissected lettuce leaves and Richard pounded lines into his skull. Then, all of a sudden, a small smirk spread on the face of her former professor and he leaned in, looking straight at her. "Believe me, Elizabeth. I don't need to _pay_ for that."

She stared at him and all these small things, the cafeteria, Collins' slurping, Richard's pounding, DeBourgh's unrelenting attempts to recruit her, suddenly fell away and she had to hold onto the table in order not to fall away herself.

"Snip, snap", Richard suddenly said, cutting the air between the two of them with two fingers. "Bah!", the blonde man cried out. "The sexual tension is killing me!"

Lizzie ripped herself out of Darcy's darkly glowing eyes. "I need some air", she muttered before turning around and running out of the cafeteria as if the furies from Meryton were still after her.

* * *

The pale midday sun bathed the rooftop garden of Rosings Hospital in blinding white light and despite the cold Lizzie Bennet sat between the concrete piers surrounding the terrace, one foot dangling dangerously over the yawning chasm, blinking into the barely there warmth while letting paper-swan after paper-swan fly down the deep end.

It wasn't the work, the constant running between laboratories, the different departments and Richard, not the early mornings or the crazy hours.

No. It were the small things, that made her count the days left at Rosings Hospital with red crosses. The children of celebrities and millionaires, treated for every minor ailment, the parents, rich and educated and from democratic, industrialised countries getting a nose job done just a floor higher while their offspring got a flu vaccination. It was the confidential disclosure agreement she had to sign every time they were treating someone, who'd shown his or her face on television once as if medical secrecy wasn't worth shit anymore and the spectacular, prestigious cases, Maddie always told her about, which the hospital tried to get their hands on in order to hit the headlines.

It was tiresome. Because even if there was something like it, something like importance to treat everyone, who needed medical attention no matter their socio-economic background and even though she saw the anguish of a cancer treatment, the pain and the joy in the eyes of the wealthy parents, the announcement of a new kind of medication, of new experimental treatment for this and that illness still didn't fill her with satisfaction or euphoria, because the bitter taste, caused by the knowledge that there was still now new medication for Malaria for several years now, tainted everything.

Richard was different in that aspect. He'd found his niche by treating rare, if not hopeless cases with the money he got from his daily, wealthy patients and she didn't despise him for doing so, no, she admired him, but it just wasn't her fight, not her passion and she it pulled her towards the A&amp;E, where no one made a difference between people yet, where everyone was too busy saving humans from bleeding out and had no time to research their patients' biography before treatment.

But the A&amp;E was temptation and damnation at the same time and she barely dared to even set foot in there, because it seemed like Darcy had put a tracking device on her these days – he was always there when she least wanted him to be.

It was like he was trying to tell her something when he looked at her like he did that morning, the remarks he made about the future, so accidental and casual as if it was no question to him that Lizzie would be there, when she didn't even plan on seeing him ever again when the eight weeks in barbie-plastic-world were over and it made her crazy, drove her practically insane on the inside that he seemed to know something she didn't.

It was like he'd made a decision. And she had no idea if she wanted to know what it was.

Lizzie heard the steps on the stairs right before the door to the rooftop was pushed open and she bit her lip painfully when the blinding, bright light of the winter sun fell on messy, dark hair, sharpening edges and drawing lines.

She saw him looking around, seeking, searching and she grinned faintly when he couldn't find her in her little hiding spot, saw him tugging at his hair in frustration and it was almost cute when he spit out a flood of impressive expletives, making her eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

Lizzie leaned her head back. "I'm here!", she then said in a bored voice, blinking at him under heavy lashes. "Wonderful weather, don't you think?"

She saw the relief in his eyes, which changed into a frown when saw her closeness to the abyss and her freely dangling foot. She let it swing back and forth just a bit faster.

"It's cold", he said in his usual way of stating the obvious. Lizzie rolled her eyes.

"And much too crowded", she shot back. Darcy watched her in that half amused, half worried way, that had been driving her crazy for the last month or so. "You should put on a jacket", he advised her and she didn't know if she should laugh or stuff the rest of the paper swans into his open mouth.

"You too", she then said, letting another bird fly down the building's side. "_Daddy_."

The grin got wider for a moment before it completely disappeared.

"I'm sorry", he then said and Lizzie's eyes grew round and wide at those words. "If I made you uncomfortable or anything, I -"

"It's alright", Lizzie brushed it off. "One might think I'd gotten used to Richard's quips in the past weeks."

He was silent for a moment. "Yes", he then said, his voice flat and expressionless. "Richard. Of course..."

She furrowed her brow, looking up from the half folded bird in her hands to see Darcy's eyes flickering darkly between her and the abyss.

Lizzie craned her neck. "Did you ever thought about it?", she then asked him quietly, watching him furrow his brow and his eyes flicker towards her

"About what?", he finally asked with caution.

"About this", she said, taking the now finished bird and holding it into the bright, blinding light. "About jumping." She threw the bird high in the air, saw it soaring high and high, saw it turning, tumbling and then precipitating. "And falling."

She saw him opening and closing his mouth a few times, saw him pressing his lips tightly together and then they were silent for a long while, simply watching the white paper bird tumbling down in spirals to the ground.

"What about you?", he finally asked without looking up.

Lizzie leaned back, blinking into the sunlight and shrugged lightly. "Yes", she then said softly, ignoring the way his hands clenched around the balustrade. "I was close."

"And then?", he asked, his voice strained. Lizzie stared at the sky over London, saw the familiar skyline and smiled softly. "Then I suddenly noticed that I didn't want to miss the next _Scrubs_-episode and climbed down again."

Darcy snorted. "It's not that easy", he said vehemently, the knuckles of his fingers white.

Lizzie laughed, a bell-like laugh full of wind chimes and soft amusement, and sat up, came close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him like an electrical field making her immobile for a split second before she let the last of the birds fly. "It is", she insisted, watching the ascend, the spiral, the downfall. "It's that easy. Living is just as easy a decision as dying. You just have to choose."

Darcy didn't say anything in response, both staring into the pale light over London until his tight grip on the balustrade loosened.

He turned around. "Lizzie...", he said softly and it was like the meaning of his decision, the damn words were on the tip of his tongue and Lizzie didn't know if she should run or jump and blinked wildly, _desperately_, but the the decision was taken from her by the shrill ringing of her phone.

She reached for it, almost letting it drop in her haste and when she picked up and answered. her voice was breathless as if she'd just run a marathon.

"Anne, what's up?", she asked, watching Darcy out of the corner of her eyes furrow his brow and retreat a few steps.

But her own breathlessness was nothing in comparison to the nearly cracking excitement in Anne's voice.

"Lizzie?", she called out and then again. "Lizzie?"

"What it is?", Lizzie asked, the panic letting her heart beat faster and the thoughts of Craig and corpses fished out of a river overwhelmed her for a moment.

"Lizzie..." She heard her taking a deep breath. "Craig's back!"

* * *

**A/N: So ba da da damm... Cue dramatic pause. Thoughts? Ideas?  
**

**It took me a while to write this chapter, because it meant planning the whole Rosings Arch to a good portion and my general idea for that consisted of: Let Lizzie and Darcy talk on a roof top about suicide and... that's it. Oh! And let them crash and burn! But only after she met Catherine. Because that will be fun. **

**On another note: I'm still looking for someone with a medical background to ask some questions... so if the pointed shoe fits... shoot me a message. I'm paying with vegan cookies. **


	24. Chapter 23 From the Shadows

**A/N: Big announcement: I'm going to England, people! ... not like _right now_... but I'll be there for the semester next autumn since I got the scholarship for it and I'm so deliriously fucking happy about it, I just might climb walls! **

**So yeah, enough about me acting like a cheerleader on ecstasy and back to the story. Serious topics this time, people, and research for this made me want to puke sometimes. Quotes in italics are from the bible (or the online version I could find) and just for your information: my relationship with church and bible and christanity itself is... _ambivalent_ at best despite me being raised catholic, and spending time on numerous _sickening_ websites researching bible quotes was worse than listening to audio files of Nazi politicans for a school theater project - Goebbels makes me _sick_ \- and did therefore not much to better my opinion of organised group activities. But that's my opinion. And I'm not judging anyone for being religious. There's my pot of tea and there's another one and some people just don't like ginger tea... or camomile... but we're getting off topic. **

**Soundtrack: Basically the whole "A Thousand Suns" Album by Linkin Park (especially Blackout, The Catalyst, Waiting for the End ..), then Thistle &amp; Weeds by Mumford &amp; Suns, Samson by Regina Spektor and the inspiration for this story: Take me to Church by Hozier  
**

**Disclaimer: I think Austen knew her quotes better than I do. So I don't own anything except for this story's original parts. And perhaps part of Richard. I love Richard.**

* * *

**Chapter 23: From the Shadows  
**

"_Doing nothing through envy or through pride, but with low thoughts of self let everyone take others to be better than himself; Not looking everyone to his private good, but keeping in mind the things of others."_

_(Philippians 2, 3-4 )_

Lizzie Bennet loved to run.

There were days when she was filled with such anxiety, such a rush and hurry, leading her to take every step faster, make every moment more abruptly so that Anne had to stop and slow her down over and over again, had tell her about self-awareness and taking delight in the little things, but Lizzie didn't want to hear a word about it, didn't want to stop and quit and it was like a never ending, viscous circle, where situation and person spurred each other on to go faster and faster, over and beyond, a rapidly spinning carousel threatening to get beyond control, to burst into a million flaming pieces, but she just ran and ran until -

Until something stopped her, put it all under slow motion, a drowning, numbing silence after chaos and hectic like crashing down from a high and the slow wading through honey from one room to the other.

"How long has he been in there?", Anne asked, her voice strangely disembodied in the dimly lit apartment. The sun was setting outside and long, skeleton-like shadow fingers were crawling over the floor, reaching for ankles, bones and bodies, travelling over quizzical faces and inviting the night to come in and play.

"Two hours", Hetty said, her head resting against her twin's shoulder, while Lou, her face illuminated by the harsh light of the notebook on her lap, was typing on it like mad. "Lou and I were here to look for some photos, we could you use for identification and then – out of the blue – we hear someone unlocking the door and then -"

" - he just pushed past us and locked himself in his room", Lou finished her sister's sentence without looking up from the screen. She scrunched up her nose slightly. "He smelled."

"Like a rubbish tip", Hetty added. "Or some homeless shelter."

Lizzie shot Anne a glance, to which she responded with a nod.

"Did he say anything?", the ambergirl asked from her place on the floor, where she was leaning – cross-legged – against the wall, her eyes shimmering, big and round, in the semi-darkness.

"No", Lou said with a frown. "But he looked a fright."

"As if he'd just escaped hell's fangs", Hetty added, closing her eyes tiredly, "and the devils were still haunting him."

Lizzie shot Anne a burning glance, and biting her lip painfully, she tore herself away from the group with her hands curled into fist to stalk over to the only window in the room and silently scream out her absolute fury at the world.

"Craig...", they heard Charlotte's voice pleading again with the door and the repeated _knock-knock-knock_, dividing time better than a clock's incessant ticking could ever do. "Get out of there! We're all worrying about you. Come on, get out!"

She sounded desperate. Lizzie blinked through the dirty window looking over the street and let the fading orange beams wander over her face. She was still wearing the pale blue hospital scrubs and her fingers clenched around the thin fabric while she tried to swallow down the lump in her throat.

"Craig..." Charlotte's voice was fading, but the knocking didn't cease. "Please, let me in at least... come on, talk to me..."

She did so every ten minutes. Like clockwork. Sitting up, knocking at the door, pleading Craig to at least give them some sign of life before she sank back onto the floor in frustration, staring blankly into nothingness.

After the news of his return had spread like wildfire and Lizzie had barely survived the final hour of her shift before Richard had sent her home with a kiss on her forehead, they all gathered in the apartment's tiny kitchen, where they were now all waiting in between dusty coke bottles and broken keyboards, wondering if they should batter in the door or if a lock pick would do the job.

Again the knocking and Charlotte's pleading voice. Then Anne, her voice cutting quietly through the noise.

"Did someone inform his parents?", the ambergirl asked and Lizzie couldn't help but snort.

"As if they care", she said bitterly – the first words, she uttered that evening.

She heard the admonishment in Anne's voice. "You don't know that, Lizzie."

Lizzie just shrugged and began drawing patterns into the layer of dust on the window pane. "Why should they care now?", she asked quietly, not really expecting an answer, especially when exactly in that moment a door opened, startling everyone.

But it wasn't the bedroom door opening, instead the front door was moved and behind it Collins' blonde head of hair appeared, smiling sheepishly with his cheeks red from the cold air outside and he gazed at Charlotte, who for the first time in nearly two hours seemed to start breathing again.

"I brought food", Rumpelstiltskin announced with a rather nervous glance at the assembled group, holding up a plastic bag with the name of the local Chinese restaurant on the front. One could literally feel the tension in the room break down a notch or two. "I hope that's alright, I thought it would be -"

"Wonderful!, Lou cried out, closing her notebook with new-found energy. "I'm starving."

"Me too", Hetty chimed in while Charlotte was still staring at Collins with an intense expression on her face. "Even though 'dying a wretched death' might be the better description."

"To be honest, I thought 'fitting' to be the right word, but -" Collins stopped his rambling abruptly when his eyes found the other's quizzically looking faces.

"Sar- Sarcasm?", he asked Lizzie, who, invigorated by the scent of Chinese food, managed to get something like a smile on her face and took the bag from his hands.

"No", she said with a small smirk. "No sarcasm, Collins."

"But then - ", Collins started, but was immediately interrupted by Charlotte, who – with a choked outcry – flung her arms around his neck and nearly smothered him by using his lips for an entirely different purpose than talking.

"Urgh", Lou said, shielding her and her sister's eyes. "Get a room, people. They're children present here."

Anne snorted rather indelicately. "If I remember correctly, we celebrated your entrance into adulthood two months ago also in a manner rather unsuitable for children, didn't we?" Hetty stuck out her tongue at her. "And I recall that you took of your shirt at some point to show that ginger-haired boy with the glasses _why_ you named your boobs Ernie and Bert."

Lou and Lizzie broke out in boisterous laughter at the same time while Hetty's face took on the shade of a ripe tomato. Anne simply grinned a bit diabolically in her pixie-like Buddha-way.

"Don't you dare tell Hayter about this", Hetty threatened them, her face still burning. "I haven't had time yet to -"

The rest of her words was drowned by the sound of rustling clothes and shuffling feet and then by the nearly Arctic silence spreading in the kitchen when the front door opened again and Wentwort's head with black, wind-swept hair and rosy cheeks appeared, blinking into the round of faces gathered in the small room, all with varying degrees of shock and disapproval etched into their features.

After Lizzie had found her way to Lyme on Christmas morning, frozen and overtired and the little devil-twins with their bodies wrapped around her like two radiators had warmed her up enough for her to be conscious of the world around her again, it didn't take her long to notice the glares, the biting comments and Anne's maltreated lower lip and to act on her threats made at a tube station on an afternoon in October so long ago when she caught Wentworth one morning on the second floor right between the stairs and the empty hallway.

She'd barely made it to the words "unforgiving, venom spitting daughter of a _bitch_" and "lemon faced, pencil biting, _sociopathic_ _sadist_" on her list of possible insults, interrupted only by random shouts along the likes of "Who do the fuck you think you are?" and the valid question, how on earth she could bear to hurt _Anne_ of all people, since that feat was only comparable to crimes like kicking puppies, cutting rainbows or making babies cry when subtle coughing and the shocked faces of the Groveland-twins had interrupted them.

Ever since then, Wentworth was persona non grata for the twins and Lizzie and despite Anne's efforts at working towards forgetting and forgiving, they were a stubborn lot.

"I came upon her downstairs", Collins explained, his small blue eyes flickering between Charlotte, Lizzie and the twins. "I didn't know... I mean, I thought... I hope... I hope that's alright", he stammered and it didn't escape Lizzie's notice how Wentworth's dark eyes immediately zeroed in on Anne, who was leaning against the wall, her back bolt upright, and then how finally everybody's eyes rested on her, waiting for her decision.

"She brought cookies, too!", Collins cried out, helpful as ever, in an attempt at lifting the tension in the room and lightening the nearly murderous glares from Lizzie, Hetty and Lou.

"Vegan cookies?", Wentworth chimed in with a nervous smile, holding up a biscuit tin covered with images of Christmas bulbs and the like. "I baked them myself yesterday. There isn't even wheat in it, but I'm not sure how vegan the chocolate chips are since I had to use the normal one with 85% cacao in it – the vegan one was sold out – and there really should only be hints of milk in it, at least that's what it says on the package, so they're not _strictly_ vegan, but -"

"It's fine", the ambergirl said and stood up in order to take the biscuit tin from her without either looking at her or touching her.

"Behave you two", she scolded the twins when she passed them, nudging Lou's shin with one foot. "She way really helpful with the search."

Hetty's reaction was a barely concealed scoff and Lou's a disdainful "Oh really? Pray tell" while Lizzie simply glared holes into Wentworth's pretty skull while the recipient of these less than favourable replies was still standing there in the middle of the kitchen, looking lost and wringing her fingers nervously.

"The newspaper", she stammered, meeting the twins' open hostility with a furrowed brow. "I still had some contacts in Northern Ireland from the research I did for a story a few years ago and they proved to be useful..."

"Very useful", Anne supplied, dancing lightly around the table and distributing plates to each one assembled. Lizzie rolled her eyes and Wentworth broke out in some sort of relieved laughter, which died immediately when she turned around and came face to face with Lizzie, who stood there with her arms crossed in front of her chest, glaring at the raven princess menacingly.

Lizzie raised an eyebrow. Wentworth grew pale.

"Stop acting like my bodyguard", Anne scolded her, nudging her with her light elf-like figure and a carton full of rice, ending the staring contest rather abruptly.

Lizzie loosened her stance, shooting Anne a playfully pouting glance. "I think I'd be good as a Terminator, don't you think?", she asked to which the ambergirl responded with that sort of bubbly laughter only she could accomplish.

"Only if you eat more, darling", she replied, dancing around Wentworth as if she wasn't even there and Lizzie could see that the raven princess didn't like that one bit. She grinned, baring her teeth in rather predatory manner and with a silent threat in her eyes, a warning like a promise that their next encounter wouldn't end without bloodshed.

Wentworth and nodded, barely visible.

* * *

"_And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the Lord will rejoice over you to cause you to perish, and to destroy you; and you shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest in to possess it."_

(5. Mose 28,63)

The orange rays of light grew paler and weaker with the passing time, making space for the shadows crawling out of corners and from under cupboards, waiting on the fringe of the small circle of light provided by the lamp hanging from the ceiling, like banned monsters while the humans consumed their foot and listened to conversations evolving from rather tough questions and concerned glances to loud outcries for Craig to come and join them before expanding into amused reminiscences of different anecdotes along with the rapidly spreading darkness in the room, when suddenly the bedroom door opened, interrupting Lou mid sentence while the red haired girl was completely caught up in telling with wildly flailing arms and fingers some weird, confusing story about Craig, three goblins and one red Santa hat (no one knew if that was supposed to be a euphemism or not).

"... and then one of them took his bag and told him.. told him than in exchange for the hat, he'd like him to take his three -"

Shuffling. The creaking noise of an opening door and then the sound of cautiously moving feet. Lou's features, red from laughing, tongue, teeth and mouth contorted in a wild dance of exuberance in the pale artificial light, froze and her forehead banged against the edge of the table when she very nearly fell from her chair in shock.

"Craig", she whispered, staring into the shadows while forcing her own body back upright.

The others, too, stared into the dark hallway, where protrusions of limbs, hair and clothing shaded the darkness and Lizzie felt her heart beating for the first time in hours.

For a few moments, nobody uttered a single word until it broke out of Charlotte like a strangled cry and she flung her arms around his neck.

The shadow figure didn't move.

And while Collins clapped his hand in excitement, the twins broke out of their frozen state and Anne and Wentworth furrowed their brows almost simultaneously, Lizzie felt fear creeping up her stomach and ribcage like cold fingers along a corpse.

Something, _something_, was decidedly wrong here.

A bouncing, beaming just as hysterically happy as she'd been desolate before Charlotte pulled and tugged, pushed and shoved the shadow figure until it moved into the circle of light and everybody breathed in sharply. Collins stopped in his manner of imitating a clapping infant and the twins', Anne and Wentworth's features mirrored each other in their expressions of wide, open eyes and gaping mouths when for the third or fourth time that day the earth suddenly stopped moving.

He was thin, positively emaciated, with bones protruding at the wrong places and in the wrong angles and a stained t-shirt, crinkling in strange, unnatural places, but more than his body's fragile state, it was the absolutely _hungry_ look in his eyes, which, even though half closed, still appeared to be too big for his face, that had Lizzie's stomach in knots and her hands curled into fists.

There were wounds. Cuts on his jaw, cheek- and collar bones and down his arms, red, barely healed, irregular lines dividing his face, interrupted and shaded by bruises, blossoming like blue and black flowers on his face, neck and arms.

But what frightened her most was his hair. Or rather, the lack of it, because the blonde, chin-length curls, which prompted Marley from _Philip's_ to call him an angel, had been cut down to three millimetre long stubbles.

It made him look older. Worn out. No pure angel any longer, but rather the fallen,_ Paradise-Lost_ version, which had barely made it home, into this kitchen, alive.

"Oh, Craig", Charlotte whispered, letting go of him as if she'd been burned. She stretched out one tentative hand, barely holding back a sob. "Mierda, what happened? Craig..."

But the shadow figure, once known as Craig, held up a hand, keeping the Spanish girl at a distance. His face quivered, he opened his mouth once, twice, but not a sound escaped. He blinked at the foot, the leftovers on the table and Anne, her amber eyes big and round, stood up and gave him the plate with rice and vegetables they'd saved for him.

Craig took it, nodded, turned around and before they knew what happened and before they could voice any protest, the bedroom door fell shut again and they heard the key turning before the world – slowly, very slowly – started moving again.

* * *

"_For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee."_

(Psalm 86, 5)

No one slept well that night.

They fell asleep right where they were, curled up on chairs, leaning against walls and covered with blankets and jackets, they created one huge, limbs intertwined, oscillating heap of human organisms on which the shadows descended when someone turned off the weak kitchen light, that had kept them at bay before.

Lizzie spent her night in a hazy state of being half awake, half asleep, which played tricks on her eyes and made her see things in the fleeting darkness, things so disturbingly grotesque that they chased her right back into crazily symbolic half-dreams, where crimson rain let blue flowers blossom on a field in the midst of nowhere while hoarse cries accompanied it all.

When the display on the microwave above the stove finally announced that it was five o'clock in the morning, Lizzie Bennet was already staring into the dawning light coming in through the window for a good half hour, watching with bleary eyes the lifting and lowering of thoraxes all over the room.

Charlotte and Collins were one bundle laying in front of Craig's bedroom door, because after the Spanish girl had gotten herself out of her frozen state, she'd picked up the knocking in intervals again without eliciting any kind of reaction – she'd given up at some point due to sheer exhaustion.

The twins were curled in blankets on the kitchen chairs like two cats – Lou had buried her head between two coke bottles while Hetty's short blonde curls were hanging precariously from the window sill.

The ambergirl in the meantime slept with her head in Lizzie's lap and with her knees pressed against her chest she very much looked like some kind of fairy in the blue morning light.

Wentworth was leaning in much the same manner as Lizzie against the wall to Anne's other side and one fleeting glance to the left told her that the raven princess, too, was already awake.

When the numbers on the clock finally hit the right target, Lizzie tried to cautiously loosen Anne's fingers, which were clinging to the thin fabric of her scrubs, while slowly disentangling herself from her, then turned her around and placed her dangling head in Wentworth's lap.

The raven princess opened her mouth in barely concealed surprise, but didn't make a sound when Lizzie silently told her to be quiet.

Anne made a sound like a small cat before stretching her limps and curling up into Wentworth's form while her fingers found new fabric to cling onto.

Lizzie shook her head with a small smile and covered Anne with one of the discarded blankets. Wentworth, in the meantime, stared at the ambergirl with something akin to wonder before slowly lowering her fingers and stroking the short, spiky hair of the pixie-like girl in her lap.

She smiled.

Lizzie shot the raven princess one last menacing glare, an _I-don't-fucking-trust-you-but-I-have-no-other-choice_-look, before stalking, albeit a bit shakily and awkwardly, past the twisted and breathing limps scattered across the floor – there was not a sound to be heard from behind the bedroom door – then picking up her bag and leaving the apartment in a rather hurried fashion.

She tried to breathe when she stood outside in the cold hallway, but even though there was more space in this small room then inside the apartment, oxygen still didn't reach her lungs more easily. Thoughts about coffee and sugar-soaked pastries kept her awake and running now that the world was moving again – slowly yes, but it was moving – and she hesitated just briefly when walking past her former apartment door, wondered only for quarter of a second how Lydia was doing and whether or not she should look after her before she discarded the thought, made it Jane's or her parents' responsibility and stumbled down the staircase.

"Lizzie!", a way too high-pitched, way too hyper voice suddenly screeched and Lizzie cursed herself for thinking about people, you don't want to see.

Because they'll find you. Like bloodhounds.

"Lizzie!", the voice cried out again and then started to giggle madly. With a stony face Lizzie looked up to see her youngest sister climbing the staircase, wild and drunk and with her arm slung around a guy's neck, who was so uncomfortably, _nauseatingly_ known to Lizzie.

"George", Lydia said, her voice like a circular saw in Lizzie's ears, pointing with drunken gestures up to Lizzie, who was standing a few stairs above them. "That's my sister... Lizzie!" She giggled. "I have _soooo_ many of them... it's hard to keep them all apart... don't you think, Liz?" Lydia grinned at her between half shut eyes. The sleek blonde mane of hair from Christmas had disappeared these days, instead now her hair was as dark and curly as Lizzie remembered it to be. "Liz, you have to meet Wicky here. He's _sooo_ funny!" She leaned in and the smell of cheap whiskey hit Lizzie right in the face. "And _sooo_ hot", she whispered loudly, causing her to giggle yet again and the guy at her side to look up.

"Septimus", George Wickham cried out, grinning and swaying drunkenly, but with a nearly calculating glint in his blue eyes, that gave Lizzie the creeps.

"Vampire", she said with a grimace. "Did you escape your grave yet again?"

The grin on Wickham's face became even larger. "Naturally", he said, tugging a giggling Lydia closer to his side. "I have to eat, right?"

Lizzie smiled coldly. "And I thought you to be of the vegetarian variation."

He pouted. "Oh, Septimus, where would be the fun in that?", he replied, but was interrupted by Lydia, who was now pointing from Lizzie to Wickham with a slur and a swagger.

"Lizzie, that's George. Or Wicky." She giggled again. "That's what I call him."

"Because he's so intelligent?" They just stared at her blankly so she brushed it off. "We've met", she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. The tiredness from the sleepless night behind her threatened to catch up with her. "But then he still claimed to be a student."

"Student?" Lydia burst out laughing. "Wicky isn't a student. He works at the garage... right across the street!"

"You work at _Forster's_?", Lizzie asked, eyeing the vampire's red sweatshirt with barely concealed disdain.

"Sure do, kid", the vampire grinned, pressing a series of small, open mouthed kisses against her little sister's neck – Lizzie had to force herself not to gag.

"I have to go", she quickly, albeit a bit stiffly told Lydia, who didn't seem to like that one bit, because she promptly flung arms around her hesitant sister's neck, nearly choking her with her weight and the smell of cigarettes and cheap booze.

"But you can't go!", she whined. "Wicky and I want to keep partying and you have to come with us!"

"I have to go to the hospital, Lyds", Lizzie replied, trying her best to disentangle herself from her sister's tentacle-like arms. "I don't have time to go partying with you."

"Oh burn! You never have time to party with me", Lydia pouted, taking a step towards her. "You're always either working or learning or hanging around with that weird girl with the crazy eyes! I'm your sister, for fuck's sake, and I still don't get to see you."

"Lydia, we haven't had any kind of... communication in over five years", Lizzie replied annoyed. "Why do you think that would change now?"

"Because I'm in London now?", Lydia cried out, her lower lip protruding sullenly. That had done the trick with their mother every time, but Lizzie wasn't Mrs Bennet. "I thought we'd take on the city together! At home they all told me that you were crazy and wild – a witch, that's what Mimi Goulding called you – but you're just boring and never here and -"

"Darling", Wickham cut in, obviously not interested anymore in the course this conversation was taking. "Let your sister be boring", he had the gall to fucking wink at Lizzie before breathing another set of kisses on Lydia's exposed skin, "and let us have our fun. We don't need her."

Lydia giggled and blushed. "True, Wicky..." She blushed when he whispered something in her ear and proceeded in dragging her up the stairs and past Lizzie.

The vampire winked at her again and blew her a kiss. She flipped him the bird and kissed her middle finger as a greeting.

"Florence was right after all", Lydia announced a bit haughtily, "when she said that you-"

"What Florence Cavanaugh does or does not say, is none of your fucking business", Lizzie hissed enraged, feeling that this farce had went on for too long. "And you, bloodsucker", she snarled at Wickham, who - like the bloody image of innocence - peeked down at her from between Lydia's wild curls, where he'd hidden and she thought about Darcy and his sister and words from an afternoon on a pavement before the rain had fallen down on them, "stick some bloody ginger up your ass and be happy with it!"

And with those, for persons not familiar with the burning impact of ginger in certain orifices, rather confusing parting words, Lizzie took her leave and jumped down the staircases leading to her imminent freedom.

There was a reason after all, why she disliked vampires.

At the building's front door she met Marley, who was balancing a tray with a pot of coffee and a lot of cups, from which Lizzie quickly stole herself one to increase her chances of survival before opening the door for the owner of _Philip's _while keeping her updated on the night's events.

"I knew this would all blow up in our faces one day", the grey-haired woman grumbled with a tired shake of her head and blinked into the dawning morning light. Lizzie just shrugged.

"Little Bee, have ya seen your sister these days?", Marley suddenly asked, her owl-like eyes focused on Lizzie. A snort was all she got as an answer and the old lady shook her head in resignation. "Take care, Lizzie-Bee, she's not keeping good company and there'll be some bad blood spilled sooner rather later."

Lizzie just shrugged again and after waving her goodbye, she made her way down the street, the pink cup with the dancing cats in one hand.

Because sometimes you don't have to actually run to run away.

* * *

"_What time I am afraid, I will put my trust in thee "_

(Psalmen 56:3)

"I saw George Wickham today", Lizzie Bennet said a few hours later when she found herself yet again caught in an elevator with William Darcy.

They both had dark shadows under their eyes, were bodies kept running simply on an overdose of sugar and caffeine and the incessant hustle and bustle around them and it were these moments in between when the elevator doors closed and locked out the whole world and all the people and sounds in it, when they could breathe and pump oxygen in their veins and not be machines for about two minutes.

"Really?", Darcy asked and she saw him curling his hands into fists, saw his shoulders tense and his profile become the one of a bloody statue.

"Yes." She smiled slightly, hid it between errant strands of hair and the elevator wall. "I called him a bloodsucker." She tilted her head to the side, heard Darcy's sharp intake of breath. "And told him to stick some ginger up his ass."

She smiled sweetly. Like Anne when she was being more witch than fairy.

Darcy didn't say anything at first and it took her a while to see his shaking shoulders and detect the silent laugh he tried to hide.

"Thanks", she heard him say softly and then he turned around and she saw that sparkling laugh, bright and wide, a laugh lighting up his whole face, transforming it into something, that was tugging and pulling at her chest and she suddenly felt the earth moving just a bit faster.

And she smiled. For the first time that day.

* * *

"_The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee."_

(Jeremia 31,3)

Lizzie found Richard on the roof top at the end of the day with a cigarette dangling from his lips. It was as cold as yesterday when she'd stood here with Darcy, but the sun was already setting and painting the terrace in a pale red-orange colour.

"I thought, you didn't smoke inside the hospital", she greeted him, standing not in wind direction in order not to inhale smoke.

The glittering man bared his teeth in a sardonic smile and blew smoke in the air. "Technically, I'm not inside the hospital right now", he said instead of answering the question and tilted his head to the side. "You look tired, Papillon."

"Shocking, right?" She leaned against the balustrade and closed her eyes for a second.

"The zombie-look?" He shook his head. "No, I'm used to that one. But today you look like someone cross-bred a zombie and a vampire. And believe me when I tell you that those two are genetically not compatible."

"You don't know how bloody right you are", Lizzie muttered, rubbing her temples tiredly.

"Darcy looks the same by the way", Richard commented, tilting his head back with the cigarette still between his lips. "That the reason for this unfortunate breeding mishap?"

Lizzie choked a bit and felt heat rising in her cheeks. "No", she said darkly. "He had nothing to do with... this."

He came a few steps closer. "You sure about that, Papillon?" It sounded like a joke, but there was a serious note to it, that unsettled her.

"Yes", she said with a sigh, blinking down at the ever busy London streets.

"Come on, Papillon. Spit it out. Did my cousin pull your hair again? I can tell him to stop doing that unless, of course, you like that kind of kinky shit -"

"Richard!" She pushed her elbow in between his ribs and his scandalized expression made her laugh involuntarily. "Believe me when I tell you that it's not about Darcy", she said, turning back towards the city. After a day like this with sprints between the A&amp;E, paediatrics and the blood bank it felt like her body was working overtime, as if she'd crossed that invisible line of the humanly possible and was now far beyond it all – she didn't know if she was able sleep even if she tried.

"What's bothering you then, darling?", the glittering man pressed on, tugging softly at one errant curl – Richard had accepted her order of not touching her skin quickly and without asking any questions and she loved him for that.

Lizzie furrowed her brow and stared down at the inner courtyard, where the entrance to the A&amp;E was and where the ambulances with blaring sirens and blue lights drove in and out in irregular intervals.

"How... how do you do it, Richard?", she finally asked him quietly, tracing invisible lines in the concrete stone of the balustrade with her index finger. "Come to terms with it? Accept who you are?"

"Ah..." Richard let out a sigh and pushed himself up to rest his weight on his elbows, cigarette dangling between his fingers. "You know, for one, Papillon, I'm the child of very wealthy parents."

She snorted involuntarily, feeling the bitterness rise in her throat, the taste biting her tongue like pure acid.

"Na, na, Papillon. Not so fast with the judgement. My family is very wealthy and possesses vast social influence. Going against me would mean going against my family and no one in England can afford that." He grinned a bit self-depreciatingly and took a drag from his cigarette. "That helps of course. Additionally... the further up you go in society, the higher the chance to meet open-minded, educated people and as we all know, education reduces ignorance. That doesn't mean that I didn't met my fair share of pretentious, self-righteous idiots – believe me, I did – but it was limited and my – how to call it – extravagance isn't that unusual in these circles. It's tolerated, I think, to a certain degree. More with amusement than earnestness behind it, but nonetheless tolerated since I never had the misfortune of being beaten up." He shrugged and she felt the cold rage, that was boiling in her stomach ever since she'd seen Craig in the sharp kitchen light, rise again.

"Money can't protect you from everything", she then said cryptically, not noticing that she'd voiced that thought out loud.

"Didn't protect you, hmm, Papillon?", Richard asked softly, his voice a sympathetic whisper in her ear.

Lizzie shrugged and shook her head.

"Why not?", he asked with a flick of his cigarette. "Economic interests are usually a great motivator."

She laughed bitterly. "As long as you don't fuck with a richer family perhaps." Lizzie closed her eyes, grimacing. Even her voice sounded like a mix of lemon juice and salty tears and it disgusted her. "Because otherwise you're screwed. Literally."

Richard didn't say anything, just slowly blew smoke into the orange glowing air. "The problem is", he said after a while, his features a play of light and shadow in the setting sun, "that people like to name things and together with these names come concepts, ideas of how this and that has to behave... _expectations_..." He snorted. "The root of all evils are expectations, your own and those of others, because you can never fulfil them, Papillon. That's impossible and it destroys people. They get so wound up in something without realising that we're not dichotomous. We're never just exclusively one thing or the other and while we do understand that in some aspects already, people are still categorised by their sexual orientation." He shook his head and she saw just a hint of glitter shimmering in his hair.

"Humans practically demand that you allocate yourself to one group or the other. And it does make some things easier, makes them more _predictable_. There's a reason for stereotypes, I don't argue with that. But we're so set on seeing a person as the sum of the labels, that are assigned to him or her that we don't realise that sexuality is just a mix of attraction and emotion and therefore per definition not constant and that identity doesn't mean that you're able to sum yourself up in a few sentences like the bloody character in a two-dimensional book you read for school."

"I can well imagine that a lot of people might disagree with you on that", Lizzie commented quietly, but with a smile.

"Yes", Richard said, letting out a sigh. "It's a constant topic of discussion between me and Darcy. That man, with all his sense and intelligence, gets so tangled up in ideas of himself and the world around him that he just doesn't notice that he's losing sleep and getting grey hair over bloody nothing."

"He's an idiot", Lizzie added, helpful as ever, and nodded seriously. "And an alien."

"Uh, Papillon. I really don't want to know about the freaky shit you two do in bed...", he shook his head in mock disgust. "That's just gross."

"You're gross", Lizzie countered.

"Your mother's gross."

"That's true!"

They laughed and Lizzie felt her muscles relax a bit. "I gave it up at some point", Richard said after a while, "defining myself, I mean. I like men and women and on some days I like to dress up and if that makes me bisexual or transsexual or something else then I don't give a fuck, because in the end, these terms are so absolutely _meaningless_, a cocoon of self-concepts trapping us more and more with each passing day until we don't even know how to breathe anymore..." He shook his head, lost in thought.

"A strange idea, don't you agree? That we're choking ourselves rather than letting go and be happy? Because after all that's what it's all about, don't you think? Be happy – and with nobody else but yourself."

"And Caroline Bingley", Lizzie threw in with a smirk.

Richard snorted. "What's that shiny skeleton got to do with this?"

"Well, she's Darcy's fiancée", Lizzie explained innocently. "He will have to find happiness with her, right?"

The glittering man watched her with a half amused, half serious expression on his face. "Does Darcy know about this engagement, dear?", he asked her.

"Of course! It's his fiancée! And I also try to remind him often enough. That man has the attention span of a fly, I tell you."

In an attempt at suppressing his laughter, Richard pressed a hand against his mouth while his shoulders were shaking. "I'm sure he's very grateful for that, little butterfly", he said when he calmed down enough to talk again.

Lizzie shrugged and turned back towards the blinking city lights. "I wouldn't be so sure about that. He's still in denial."

Richard snorted. "Don't project onto others, darling", he said cryptically and grown up as she was, she decided to simply respond by sticking out her tongue.

"Cute", the glittering man said, leaned in and stuck out his own tongue.

"Ihh", she said and backed off. "You're disgusting."

"Didn't we discuss that topic already today?" Richard grinned widely and boyishly and she shoved him playfully.

"One too many times", Lizzie countered. "And then I tell you something about manners and then you answer with one of your wise words of wisdom about personal freedom and the restriction enforced by society and then I will -"

"- stick out your tongue at me and the whole discussion begins anew." Richard shook his head. "Gracious, we're a pathetic bunch, don't you think?"

"Shocking, right?", Lizzie countered, burying her head in her arms, which were leaning on the balustrade.

"Hmm", Richard said, taking another drag. "Papillon... tell your friend – I'm assuming we're talking about a friend here?" Lizzie nodded silently. "Tell him that there are more important things in life than your sexual orientation. It only dictates how you're having fun, not what your life has to look like."

Lizzie gazed at him for a very long time, while the fading sunlight became weaker with every minute, making way for darkness to come out and play. "Thanks", she finally whispered.

Richard nodded slightly, tugging at one of her loose curls. "What's up, Papillon?"

She shrugged, tasted the lump in her throat and was close to telling him all about Craig and flowers blooming on skin, but when her mouth opened to tell the tale, something entirely different came out.

"I can't do it any longer", she said quietly, arms slung around her upper body, "... choosing, I mean. I was able to, you know, _before_. I could decided to just... be happy, but these days... it's getting harder and harder and it's... running like sand through my fingers. Impossible to catch"

Richard watched her with his head tilted back and a thoughtful expression on his face. "I don't think we just can decide to be happy, Papillon. Either you are or you aren't. Pain and pleasure go hand in hand... and not only when it comes to the kinky stuff."

She smiled softly at the remark and nudged his side with her elbow. "Why are you smoking today, Richard?", she asked him after a while, looking at him questioningly. His usually open and joyous expression darkened considerably at her words.

"A cigarette for each and everyone of them", he said finally, his voice strained. "This one's for Emma."

"Forever ago", Lizzie whispered and the corners of Richard's mouth twitched slightly.

"Yeah...", he finally said and she blinked, watching that strange entity of careless child and wise adult before her with wonder in her eyes. "I hate buying new ones", he muttered, gazing at the nearly empty packet in his hand with disgust. "Just immortalizes my failures in a price tag."

"What happened?", she asked, the image of a freckled girl with red hair and a passion for Justin Bieber in mind, a girl, whose bandages she'd just changed that very morning.

"Cardiac arrest", Richard said glumly, staring so lost in thought at the glimmering end of the cigarette. "Right in the OR. We couldn't do anything."

She nodded slowly and they both enjoyed the silence until Richard stubbed out the rests of his vice and kicked it over the edge.

"Come on, Papillon. Let's get you home", the glittering man said. "I got enough dead people on my floor and I want you very much alive for my aunt's special dinner this weekend."

Lizzie groaned, barely escaping Richard's tickling fingers. "Do I have a choice?", she asked resigned, causing Richard to laugh again.

"Dream on, Papillon."

* * *

"_For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD"_

(**Jeremia 30,17** )

When Lizzie came home at the end of the day, she found Craig's apartment in nearly the same state she'd left it in that very morning.

It was dark and only the faint light from advertising signs and street lamps outside illuminated the room enough to sketch lines and contours, there were a dozen different containers with food on the table, Indian curry and rice this time and the Groveland-twins, Anne and Charlotte were again sleeping on the floor, curled up in jackets and blankets, while Collins and Wentworth were nowhere to be found.

Lizzie tiptoed carefully past and between unmoving limbs until she reached Craig's bedroom door, where she used the lock pick, that she always kept in her pocket for several, not all legal reasons, to open the door as quietly as possible.

She heard Craig's breathing before she saw him and she swiftly closed the door behind her again before she switched on the night lamp.

She gasped when she saw him. Craig was sitting on his bed in a grey, way too big sweatshirt, the cuts and bruises on his face even more evident than they'd been last night.

"Oh, god", it escaped her and the shadow figure, that had been her flatmate once, looked up, an eerily calm, disturbingly empty look in his eyes before the corners of his mouth lifted to form a sardonic smile and he shook his head as if to say that god had very little to do with this.

She fell on her knees at his feet, jacket and bag pack discarded and only with great effort was she able to suppress the tears and the desire to hug him tightly.

Lizzie bit her lip and proceeded to fetch the things from her bag, she'd nicked from the hospital's storage room,. Bandages, antiseptics, needle and thread should it prove to be necessary.

He winced when she touched his skin, when she pulled the garment from his torso to clean and bandage the cuts there. Most of them weren't deep, rather superficial and a lot of them were already healed. In the yellow light of the bedside lamp she took a closer look at some of them and saw that the wounds and cuts were layered, fresh ones over older ones as if someone had beaten him up repeatedly over the past few weeks.

"_And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them... _Leviticus, 20:13", Craig whispered, while she numbed one of the fresher, deeper cuts, cleaned it and closed it with a few precise stitches and Lizzie's hands were trembling with rage for a moment.

"_God is love, and everyone, who has love, is in God, and God is in him_", Lizzie replied, her voice trembling, and looked up. "Gospel of John."

She saw something in those dark, formally brown-green eyes and for the first time since he came back, something seemed to crack inside him. "_For the Lord thy God is a merciful God, he will not fail thee_", she added, climbing next to him on the bed. "Deuteronomy."

"Lizzie..." Craig's face crumbled, became soft and then he fell over over and his head sank against Lizzie's shoulder. "He got married", he whispered hoarsely and her chest and throat tightened at those words. "Michael got married and they... they're expecting their first child in May."

He didn't need to say more. Then even though Craig had never disclosed much about himself when sober, he talked a lot more when inebriated and they'd been laughing in their alcohol induced haze numerous times that apparently they were both haunted by a capital M from their past, even though she was mostly the only one to remember these conversations afterwards.

"They told me that I had to get over it, that I had to cleanse.. _purify_... Lizzie, I... I tried, but _it just won't work_!" He cried openly now, a fallen angel in purgatory with blue flowers as marks on his skin and she slung her arms around him, tried to _heal, hold, protect_, whispering the gospel of Matthew "_Be not judges of others, and you will not be judged!_" fervently like a mantra, because at the end of the day when you had to stop running, you could only hope that you'd gotten far enough for the monsters not to catch you.

And drag you back into the shadows.

* * *

**A/N: Some explanations: **

**-Lizzie's comment about Wickham being "so intelligent" because his name is Wicky is a reference to a cartoon series for children, where a young viking boy solves problems by using his brain rather than his muscles (like his daddy does). It's really popular even though it's a bit old, but they still show it on TV. I don't know if people outside of Germany and Sweden know it (i think it was produced in Japan...) **

**\- Lizzie's "forever ago" reply to Richards "For Emma" is a reference to the song and album of the same name (For Emma, forever ago) by Bon Iver. It's a lovely and touching piece of music and it serves as a great lullaby for my little baby brother. He has good taste in music. **

**Shoot me a message if something was incomprehensible, I answer as many questions as possible and I always love to hear from you. You can also find me on tumblr (link on profile), **

**love, Teddy **


	25. Chapter 24 Original Sin

**A/N: So, darlings, as I promised some of you, here's an update. I'm not even trying to apologize, life is a clusterfuck and with my impending erasmus-semester (anyone studying in great britain with some words of advice out there? you strange british people are killing me) on top of doing even more seminars than necessary (who ever thought of relaxing? me? _noooo_...) in some attempt at...I don't know. Probably not surviving this semester.**

**But I do love whining. And I do love writing. And I'm all strangely excited about next chapter. You will know at the end of this one. **

**Warning: THIS IS NOT HUNSFORD (and that's the last time I will have to use the disclaimer and basically this IS the first part of three chapters depicting Hunsford, so technically...) **

**But fuck technicality (printer at uni is still not working and I'm getting _frustrated_...) so just_ fuck it _**

**Soundtrack: Leaving Jesusland and Cool and Unusual Punishments from NoFX are quoted and Distaster Buttton by Snow Patrol leads up to the next one...**

**Disclaimer: I don't know if Austen had a Lady Catherine as a relative. I kind of do. So perhaps, she's kind of mine? Well, she does know how to use acid to get stains out of clothes and she can be a darling if you get some champagne into her. But she's also split with the other one, who thinks I'm the devil's child since I didn't know what the fuck a branch of box tree has to do with Palm Sunday. Any of you an idea? **

* * *

**Chapter 24: Original Sin  
**

Dinner at the DeBourgh household was a rather strange affair, Lizzie Bennet contemplated while following the maid through the long and dark hallways leading to the parlour.

Firstly, there was Richard, who'd shown up out of the blue at her room in the building Rosings Hospital reserved for their employees, two hours before they'd agreed to meet, together with a sparkling black cocktail dress, which he probably would also have dressed her in if she hadn't chased him out of her tiny bathroom with the heel of her stiletto.

He'd sat down on her bed grumbling, randomly inspecting various objects and throwing biting comments about people living in shoe boxes at her head, while she'd been busy transforming her hair into something barely tameable and applying lipstick without looking like the Joker from The Dark Knight.

After a few corrections from the glittering man, whose fingernails and eyelids were coloured bright pink this evening – clashing exquisitely with the shimmering, emerald green suit he was wearing – they'd finally been ready to make their short walk over to Lady Catherine's quarters somewhere in the labyrinth that was the castle-like hospital building, when Richard had pulled her in the other direction towards a waiting limousine.

That had been the second strange happening of that evening, because the glittering man just wouldn't be persuaded, instead he'd just grinned and shrugged, telling her that the old Lady would insist on traditions and when she'd asked him if those traditions also included environmental pollution, he'd simply pushed a drink from the car's mini bar in her hands and told her to literally suck it up, because yes, his aunt was a rather horrible exemplar of the human race and if she wanted to survive this evening, she'd need the alcohol in her system.

She'd gulped down the burning amber liquid without asking any more questions.

And now they were here and were led through the dark, overdecorated hallways by a taciturn, grumpy looking maid in a uniform, that reminded her of Downton Abbey.

"I got the distinct impression that Sally here does not like me", Lizzie whispered to Richard after the maid had cast her another scornful glare over her shoulder, to which she replied with a bright smile.

"She doesn't like me either", Richard pouted and Lizzie had to laugh softly at the thought of the look and the scrunched up nose Miss Dorothea over there had bestowed upon the glittering man's suit when they'd entered the building.

"Does she like anyone then?", she asked, linking her arm with his. "Blatant disdain for each and every breathing human being does sound a bit... _dreary_, don't you think?"

"Well, I do think she fancies her Ladyship quite a bit", Richard chuckled, blowing Miss Dorothea a kiss when the maid opened yet another set of doors for them.

"Unrequited love?", Lizzie asked, clicking her tongue. "Tsst. Tsst. How _tragic_."

"And you're heartless, darling", Richard replied, squeezing her with one arm. "Besides... who knows, who knows? My aunt is just as bigot as they grow them."

Lizzie laughed at that, but was interrupted by Miss Dorothea's sour mien, when the maid knocked on one of those dark oak doors, stepped in and announced "Mr Fitzwilliam and Miss Bennet" to her Ladyship.

The first thing she saw, when she stepped into the ostentatiously decorated parlour, was the waiting figure of Lady Catherine, who, in an attempt at appearing imposing and menacing, had built something like a tower with her grey locks, lots of hairspray and jewels on top of her head.

She was sitting on a grand, throne-like chair, her countenance just as sour as Miss Dorothea's and reminded her of a bulldog, which in combination with her usual pitch black clothes appeared at bit strange and created the illusion of seeing a rather badly put together scarecrow for some tacky horror movie.

"Richard!", she cried out, jerking her head towards the newcomers. "Miss Bennet! What a pleasure to finally meet you!"

"I'm sure it is", Lizzie replied straight-faced, making a small curtsey so as not to have to shake their hostess' hand. Richard followed her example with a small bow.

The old lady's squinted eyes wandered over the glittering man's suit, stopping with an expression of barely hidden contempt at the places, where the fabric shimmered green or his pink fingernails caught the light of the various candles scattered throughout the room, yet she held back a doubtlessly biting comment when Richard simply raised an eyebrow in silent challenge, before her eyes drifted over to Lizzie's attire and she jutted her chin forward just barely noticeably.

Lizzie could see why she and Miss Dorothea were so fond of each other.

"Rather short your garment, don't you believe, Miss Bennet?", the remark promptly left her mouth and Lizzie just smiled a dripping, sugary sweet smile.

"Depends on the perspective, don't you _think_, Lady Catherine?" She heard Richard's barely masked snort and saw a faint frown appear on the old lady's smoothly ironed forehead.

"So you desire to give indecency perspective?", the Lady countered, pursing her lips disapprovingly. "How... _unusual_."

"No", Lizzie replied, her polite smile smoothly sliding like a mask over her face. "Actually, it's not."

Lady Catherine frowned before her features hardened. "Does that mean that you make a habit of such...endeavours?"

"To be open minded?", Lizzie asked politely. "Yes, it's my favourite pastime."

Richard laughed softly and the old Lady, whose eyes had flickered about the room in a distinctly confused manner, narrowed down on the glittering man.

"I can't say, I'm surprised, Richard", she said with a lift of her chin, causing the tower on her head to waver dangerously and stood up. "I told you time and time again that your... _extravagant_ ideas are not fit for polite society. Pfft! What his mother was thinking when she raised him, I will never know, Miss Bennet", she turned to Lizzie, who simply arched an eyebrow and snorted. "Annette has always had a rather.. _peculiar_ view on the world as such."

"She was in Wonderland most of the time", Richard replied dryly, inspecting his fingernails. "Marijuana, LSD, various mushrooms... the list is endless."

"Then it's a small miracle that you turned out as sane as you did", Lizzie commented just as dryly. "I've always -"

"That's all Fitzwilliam-Blood", the venerable Lady, clapping her hands together with such force that the adorned gold rings around her fingers shook. "Even though what persuaded Arthur to make that Hippie-girl the wife of an earl after all continues to elude me, it's simply -"

"He was high, aunt Catherine", Richard interrupted her. "He also thought that little green men were walking out of his nose:"

"Out of his _nose_?", Lizzie repeated, scepticism and amusement evident in her voice.

"Artistic license", Richard brushed it off with a small wink. "The same freedom I corrupted you with if you believe my dear aunt."

"Which would imply that I actually _am_ corrupt", Lizzie replied with a crooked smile.

"You _did_ put on the dress."

"Because you _blackmailed_ me. Not because I was _persuaded_."

"Semantics", Richard smiled. "You're wearing it."

"Because you forced me to!"

"Dorothea, champagne please!", Lady Catherine called out in midst their banter, having followed their bickering like some interesting tennis match and clapped her hands one, two times before turning back towards the squabblers. "It does not surprise me that Richard was behind your choice of attire, Miss Bennet", she then said. "You should improve your resistance skills, because you see, my nephew doesn't have the best taste when it comes to clothing and... _propriety_."

"Really?" Lizzie made it a show of looking around the room, taking in silk screens and mural paintings, plush couches and chairs and the ever-present gold applications and then examined Richard again. "I think he matches the furniture."

"But, how- Miss Bennet...", the disapproving old Lady begun, but a bell-like, way, _way_ too familiar laugh interrupted her.

"Do accept it, mother", the voice from the other side of the room said, confusing and surprising Lizzie quite drastically. "You won't be able to persuade Miss Bennet otherwise."

A swish of flowing pink fabric and then a pair of huge, golden eyes in a heart shaped face, smiling at her and taking one of the champagne flutes from Miss Dorothea's tray with careless grace. "She _is_ a bit stubborn from time to time."

Lady Catherine snorted and raised her long nose up in the air. "Miss Bennet, may I present? My daughter, Miss Anne-"

"We know each other, mother."

"- DeBourgh."

"-_Elliot_."

"Pardon?", the equal parts horrified and confused question came tumbling out of Lady Catherine as a reaction to Lizzie's nearly hissed address. "What kind of name is that?"

"Mother", the ambergirl – because it was indeed her, standing in some airy, dusty pink dress in front of Lizzie and Richard in her mother's parlour and not finding this strange at all – put a hand on her mother's arm and Lizzie, suddenly realizing who _exactly_ Lady Catherine was in relation to her friend, felt a new wave of disgust at the old Lady rise inside her. "You know that I did change my last name."

"But of course!", the old Lady snorted. "But I thought it was just one of your _flights of fancy_." She scrunched up her nose. "Nothing permanent. _Elliot_. Really...How _mundane_."

Anne wanted to reply something but Lady Catherine had already turned back towards Lizzie. "I don't know if you're aware of it, but many years ago there have been some nasty... _rumours_ concerning my daughter." She nodded grimly, like a soldier after surviving a battle. "I do hope that you're none of the sort to be impressed by that sort of thing, Miss Bennet."

Lizzie gritted her teeth and glared at Anne, who just sipped her champagne unimpressed. "I always tend to stick with the _truth_, Lady Catherine."

The ambergirl's eyes lit up at the challenge and she tilted her head to the side. "Which is, much like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?", she said with a barely hidden smile and a jolt of her chin.

"And clearly _communicable_", Lizzie shot back.

"But not always necessary." Golden eyes sparkled. "Or important enough."

"Isn't _that_ in the eye of the beholder?", Lizzie questioned back, her hands curled tightly into fists, swallowing down that acidic taste and her inner panic in the face of betrayal.

"Can't we just agree on it being _not practical_?", Anne said with a good-naturedly, yet bored sigh.

"You mean it was just _unbelievable laziness _on your part?"

"Too many inconvenient moments, perhaps?"

"Or rather pure cowardice."

"Which is yet again open to interpretation", Anne remarked. "Let's call it a story without names, because I didn't thought it relevant?"

"There still remains the question of _truth_."

"Doesn't it always?"

Both girls, one green and one golden pair of eyes, glared at each other, defence and offence as metaphors on the battlefield and none of them willing to back down.

"Why, oh why, do I have the _distinct feeling_ that you two know each other?", the glittering man chimed in at some point when he could find some room in between two gun shots. Lady Catherine in the meantime simply stood there gaping like some astonished gold fish clad in black. It was not becoming.

"We're flatmates", Anne replied without looking away from Lizzie's sombre looking face.

"Friends", the girl admitted reluctantly.

Anne pouted. "Sisters", she then said and Lady Catherine gasped.

"Miss Bennet!", she cried out. "You're not one of them, are you?"

"One of whom?", Lizzie asked a bit indignantly. "I don't appreciate discrimination without information about however arbitrarily made group affiliations, but if you want to judge me because of the _My-Little-Pony_ collection in my bedroom, I won't take any prisoners."

"_My-Little-Pony_?", Richard cried out and clapped his hands in excitement. "You got a _My-Little-Pony _collection? Oh, I just love Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle! We absolutely have to -"

"Shht!", Anne admonished him, pinching him in the side so that he would shut up. "I said _sisters_, mother, not _domestic partners_."

"Oh", Lady Catherine said, a hand over her heart. "I thought you strayed again from the path your maker laid out for you – and that you'd taken Miss Bennet with you -"

"Mother..."

" - otherwise we would've needed to consult Dr. Kramer", the old Lady continued. "We can't allow Miss Bennet to -"

"Why on God's green earth does everyone think I'm that easily manipulated?", Lizzie hissed at Richard, who was watching the scene with evident amusement.

"It's your aura, Papillon. Just your _aura_."  
"Says you, _Twilight Sparkle_."

"Ouch, that hurt!"

"Mother, I've never quit my ways of_ negative virtue_ and _profligacy_ as you like to call it. So I don't know why you think that -", Anne begun, but was drowned out by Lizzie.

"I'm not going to some _My-Little-Pony_ convention with you, Richard, even if you kidnap me!"

" - but Dr. Kramer said that you're cured! He is a doctor!"

" - of Christian theology, mother. He's not a physician."

"But he is a doctor!"

"Which doesn't qualify him to prescribe me drugs, that turn me into a walking Zombie! I do like my feelings, mother, thank you very much."  
"But if it does make you sick -"  
" - they got real life figures there, Papillon! And they're moving!"

"You're also moving, you oversized unicorn. But I'm not driving two hundred miles to watch you together with a bunch of adult _children_!"

"You're seeing me every day."

"Inevitably, Richard. _Inevitably_", Lizzie sighed ending her discussion with Richard with a promise to only go there with him under two conditions: Alcohol and no cameras.

" - but I'm not ill, mother."

"Yes, Dr. Kramer already said that. He cured you."

"I've never been _ill_, mother. He can therefore never have _cured_ me."

"But he did!"

"He spilled holy water over my head and screamed "_Get thee hence, Satan_!" like a hysteric lunatic. I escaped before he could ram that syringe up my arm. _Thank the Lord_ for that!"

The old Lady snorted again. "At least you didn't infect, Miss Bennet", she grumbled like a sullen child, that didn't want to go to bed when curfew came. "And don't you dare use the Lord's name in vain."

"We're sisters, mother. _Sisters_!"

"Who are sisters?", another, way too fucking familiar if considerably deeper voice asked from the parlour's entrance and Lizzie groaned.

"Bells", she bit out, eyes shut tightly, one hand on her right temple. "We need bloody _bells_ for him."

Richard grinned and turned towards the newcomer, who, clad in a suit but without tie, his arms crossed in front of his chest, was leaning against the door frame, watching the scene unfold.

"Lizzie and Anne are apparently sisters", the glittering man informed his cousin with an excited clap of his hands. "_Blood sisters_ to be honest." He turned to look at Lizzie. "Can I call you 'dancing girl in the moonlight' or 'crazy bird on the rooftop' now?"

"Do you detect feathers in my hair?", she countered dryly, eliciting a small chuckle from Darcy. "You're already calling me a butterfly, don't you think it's enough with the pet names?"

"How do you know our cousin, Miss Bennet?", Darcy asked with a bit of a confused glance at a pixie-like grinning Anne, who danced over and embraced him. He evaded Lizzie's questioning look, when the girl raised her eyebrows in surprise at the sudden formal address.

"She's my sister,William", Anne said with a smile. "Even though she can be a bit pigheaded at times."

"I'm well aware of that", Darcy said with a frown, tugging softly at a strand of Anne's wild, spiky hair. "She thinks I'm an alien."

"And _she_ can hear you", Lizzie grumbled a bit indignantly, while Richard just gave her another drink. "Even though I'm not so sure about that sister-thing anymore."

"Oh, quit the dramatics!", Anne shot back, bouncing over to Lizzie and perching her hands on her hips with a mischievous grin. "As if you're telling me everything about you and -" Her gaze fell on Darcy, who was watching them both with sudden interest. Lizzie glared at her. "- never mind." She giggled and Lizzie saw her former Professor opening his mouth to say something, but got drowned out by the force that was Lady Catherine in black.

"My dear Darcy!", the old Lady cried out. "How good to see you again! It must have been ages since -"

"I was here yesterday", the dark-haired man replied curtly, taking the crystal glass with water from the tray, Miss Dorothea held out to him.

" - see you so scarcely, my dear nephew. And look how pale you've grown! Did you -"

" - the A&amp;E department was bursting at the seams yet again yesterday. Catherine. Did you know about that? We need more staff to -"

" - and what about Georgiana? Does she play again? I always told her that without practice -"

" - completely overworked. And the night nurses are fresh out of training and breaking down under the pressure. They're not used to seeing _six_ _stab wounds_ in one arm - "

"- such a pretty girl. It's such a shame that she doesn't -"

"- _bloody_ Wilson collars them all. We need the staff _there_ and not in the god damn _radiology_ -"

"- really need to write to Mrs Annesley that she should take more care of what Georgiana eats -"

"Is it always that way with those two?", Lizzie asked the ambergirl, who was standing next to her, watching them talk past each other.

"Pretty much", Anne said with a shrug. "He tries to talk some sense into her and she just wants to hear pretty fairy tales. It could be a brilliant metaphor for current world politics when she'd also sit on her front porch with a rifle in hand ready to shoot anyone coming too close."

Lizzie grimaced. "Happens rather often, doesn't it?"

"Don't tell me you're jealous now", Anne replied, raising both eyebrows. Her golden eyes twinkled in amusement.

"I was _betrayed_", Lizzie declared dramatically with just enough righteous indignation. "That has nothing to do with jealousy about stupid evenings for which you need Oropax and a box full of Valium to survive."

"Thought about it that often, did you now?" She shook her head with a quiet "Tst, tst", while the back and forth in front of them grew louder again. "Denial never did look good on anyone, darling."

"Denial? Who's talking about -"

"- she's gotten way too thin! Darcy, please don't tell me that she's one of those young willowy things, who sustain themselves by eating pulverized beans and green stuff -"

"- and the changes don't happen fast enough. The other departments are disinclined to take on any more patients than absolutely necessary and there's something like a permanent war going -"

"- bad enough that Anne insists on eating like a bird and with the way Miss Bennet looks -"

"- and if we do finally have some vacancy, they try to park their patients there, which limits our capacities severely in case of emergency -"

"Anne, I'm talking about the _absolute emotional confusion_ going hand in with the fact that we've been discussing a guy for over five months, about whom you so _conveniently_ forgot to mention that he's your bloody _cousin_ and I nearly -"

"Yes", Richard chimed in with a wide smile, champagne flute in hand. Bastard had sneaked in from the side and was now blinking over Anne's shoulder at Lizzie. "What did you have to say about our dear cousin?"

"Nothing", Lizzie bit her lower lip, glaring at Richard and Anne, who with their faces so close together looked so remarkably similar that Lizzie wondered how on earth she hadn't seen that they were related earlier. "Only that the fact that Darcy is your fucking cousin is a bit... _incestuous _in light of our chosen family relationship, don't you think?"

Both their eyes grew wide. And even wider. "Don't say that out loud", Anne warned er in mock seriousness. "Don't you ever say that out loud."

" - but it's just not right that I never see her, Darcy. Sometime this summer I will come to Pemberley and I expect -"

"- just have to dismiss him! He's useless and a danger for the whole bloody hospital if he keeps changing duty rosters like they're scrabble pieces. How on earth should -"

"- just has to start again. She's so talented! Did you already tell Miss Bennet -"

"- a nurse from radiology in the OR is damn near a catastrophe. And if we're not careful, then we'll soon have a bloody _in-house revolution _-"

"Why the fuck shouldn't I say that out loud?", Lizzie protested. "It's _bloody disturbing_ and – quite frankly – _the truth_ -", one sharp glance in Anne's direction, "- and if next time someone _teases_ me about him -" she eyed Richard with suspicion, "- then I can just stick out my tongue and say "_Bleurgh_", because how dare anyone think something so revolting when the Professor is practically _my cousin_."

"We all know that you can say "_Bleurgh_" very well", Richard chuckled. "You should train your gag reflex, Papillon. There are many advantages to it."

"In your dreams, Richard", Lizzie retorted, placing her empty glass on one of those small tables scattered throughout the room – Miss Dorothea was suspiciously absent – before crossing her arms over her chest and looking at Anne challengingly. "So?"

"You shouldn't say something like that", the ambergirl began calmly, "because then she'll have you married to him sooner than you can shout _'Get thee hence, Satan_!'"

"Oh, _no_!"

"Oh, yes!"

"Oh, _yeah_!", Richard cried out, shrugging when both girls turned to look at him uncomprehendingly. "_That's_ the reaction to a non-existent gag reflex:"

"- the nurses have a not to be underestimated power in the hospital and disregarding them and their wishes only to satisfy the desires of lunatic, conceited egocentric is simply -"

" - why, I believe she could be very useful. I still don't understand why you won't let Dr. Kramer have a look at her -"

"- not just irresponsible, but also downright uneconomic. We can't just simply give up on hundreds of skilled employees -"

"But why?", Lizzie whined, holding her head upright with both hands after Richard had resurrected her with a few sips of amber-coloured whiskey. "She could just marry him off to you, couldn't she?"

"Darling, Richard and I are the devil's children, she won't risk contaminating her favourite nephew with such amorality -"

"- you did hear that, too, didn't you?", Richard chimed in, still leaning over her shoulder. "He's her "_darling nephew_" and I'm the chemical experiment of two junkies gone awry. Life just isn't bloody fair!"

Anne patted his shoulder reassuringly. "Well, and she thinks you're the golden girl to his golden boy – is that an expression?", she asked Richard, who just shrugged and winked at Lizzie. "However, she just wants -"

"- many little Darcys crawling around Pemberley", Richard finished the sentence for her with a rather bored shrug of his shoulders and continued inspecting his bright pink fingernails.

"And no one thought about asking me?", Lizzie cried out. Her opponents simply raised their eyebrows in such synchrony, transforming their faces into the same expression of _you-didn't-really-think-that-did-you-now _disbelief that it was rather bizarre to watch.

"Do you see that?", Richard asked, pointing with his thumb over to the still arguing, still talking past each other couple. Darcy had now very nearly finished his glass of water – she really wanted to know if he did in fact consume pure water or if it was something else – and was gesticulating widely with it to emphasize his point while the old Lady alternately ran after and away from him like a small, slightly oversized crow.  
"- and they're going to strike, Catherine. Their working conditions are impossible and Wilson only makes the whole thing worse. In the long run -"

" - reminds me so much of her mother. Her eyes and hair. Just like Anne. That's Fitzwilliam-Blood, my darling William. All just Fitzwilliam-Blood that -"

" - then the whole bloody hospital is going to just crumble down under your feet!", Darcy thundered at last and they were all waiting with baited breath for a reaction, but the old Lady simply kept on scurrying throughout the room, clapping her hands together when she also finally came to a conclusion. "- and she's such a pretty girl. And so talented!"

Lizzie saw Darcy letting out a long sigh before emptying the glass in his hand and putting it aside. Anne next to her sighed, too.

"And so it ends..." She raised her glass as if to toast.

"...yet another time", Richard chimed in, also raising his glass

"Like every time..."

"... in a disaster", Lizzie finished for them, snatching the champagne flute right out of Anne's hand and gulping it down in one take. "The endless circle."

"How depressing", Anne remarked and Richard opened his mouth to add his two cents, preferably something about existent or non-existent gag reflexes, but just in that moment the door opened and Miss Dorothea in all her strict glory carried in a sort of Chinese gong, stroke it once and then announced with her thin lips tightly pressed together that dinner was ready.

"Oh, how wonderful!", Lady Catherine cried out, motioning for the whole party to follow her with her arms stretched out in a stately manner. "Darcy, do accompany Miss Bennet to dinner. Richard, you take Anne."

"With pleasure, Ma'am", the glittering man grinned, bowing in front of a giggling ambergirl. "Miss Elliot."

"Mr Fitzwilliam." She curtseyed and took his arm,

"Miss Bennet", the dark voice, that so often made her cry out for bells or other signs of warning so that she wouldn't have to feel like someone pushed her backwards into a fucking swimming pool in bloody December every time she heard it, called out.

"Really, Darcy?", she asked, raising an eyebrow in question while he watched her out of dark and warm glowing eyes. "You think that now's the right moment to start obeying me when it comes to addressing me?"

"Obeying?" One corner of his mouth twitched. "I somewhat doubt that there is in fact a right or wrong when it comes to that particular matter, _Elizabeth_."

She opened her mouth in mock indignation and took his proffered arm. Her fingers prickled at the contact. "Are you accusing me of capriciousness, Doctor?", she asked, feeling a bit distracted by his sheer proximity.

"No." She heard him chuckle softly. "Just of a more arbitrary choice of preferences."

She snorted lightly. "All a matter of perspective, don't you agree?", she replied with a sudden, rather melancholy smile while they were walking down the dark hallways towards the dining room.

"Yes", he said so quietly that it was barely audible. "This part of the house is nearly an exact copy of my aunt's rooms in her mansion in Kent", he then said rather abruptly and Lizzie frowned at the sudden change of topic.

"Really?", she asked, studying the décor a bit more closely. Most of it seemed dark and overladen. There were a lot of biblical scenes portrayed on various paintings and tapestries and over it all was the oppressing scent of dust, tickling one's nose. "How..."

"Sad?", Darcy asked softly. "Yes. My aunt moved here after Anne left their home some many years ago. She couldn't bear it to be all alone in the empty house in - "

"No", Lizzie interrupted him, her thoughts wandering to words, Anne had whispered to her so long ago in the quiet anonymity of a dark room while the credits of some film were flickering over the TV screen. "You misunderstood me."

"How -"

"I wanted to say how _horrible_", Lizzie said with a hard voice to suppress the trembling in it, looking straight ahead while walking after the other three people, who'd just disappeared behind a corner at the other end of the hallway. "How absolutely _awful_."

"Elizabeth", he began again and she would have pulled her hand from his arm if he hadn't hold her there. Luckily for him, he only touched her where she'd put black satin ribbons around her wrists and she therefore didn't feel the need to reflexively punch him square in the face.

"For how long have you known my cousin now?", he asked, brow furrowed as if trying to solve a complicated crossword puzzle.

She shot him a glance. "Five years. Close to six. She was the first person I met in London."

He nodded sharply. "Then, I believe, you know -"

"Everything?" It sounded very nearly derisive the way she said it while they were marching towards the light from the open door at the end of the hallway, where Miss Dorothea was waiting. "I believe I do."

"So -"  
"You know, Darcy", she turned towards him, amusedly blinking eyes in the light of the lamps before crossing the threshold, "the more interesting question is in fact, if _you_ do know everything."

And with those words she left him there in the hallway and entered the dining room.

"Oh, Miss Bennet!" Lady Catherine cried out from the head of the table, where she'd sat down on another pompous chair, similar to the one in the parlour. "Darcy! Where in God's name have you been?"

Lizzie frowned at the question and more so because of the downright calculating smile, spreading on the old Lady's thin, wrinkly lips like nasty, sticky honey.

Anne and Richard suppressed a smile while Lizzie simply looked at their hostess with unconcealed irritation. "In the hallway", she then said. "On our way over here."  
"I'm sure of it." The smile grew even wider and she felt herself reminded of a grinning Venus flytrap. Or of that scary plant from the little shop of horrors.

"Take a seat, take a seat!", Lady Catherine prompted them and Lizzie took a seat next to Richard and to the Lady's right side while Darcy took the place opposite her next to Anne.

"But no, _no_! That just won't do!", her Ladyship cried out, brow furrowed and chin jutted forwards like a sullen child. "Darcy, change seats with Richard. Immediately!"

The glittering man made a hurt face and pouted while Lizzie – seeing her last hopes or even her only lifeline dashed – curled her hands into fists under the table. Anne giggled.

"She is rather decisive, isn't she?", Darcy's dark voice whispered into her ear when he pulled out the chair next to her in order to sit down. She suppressed a shudder.

"No, not all", Lizzie whispered back. "She's a delight."

Again the gong sounded with a kind of scary precision and then Miss Dorothea came in, dutifully and slowly carrying in the plates with soup and placing them just as dutifully and incredibly slowly in front of each of them.

"So, Miss Bennet", Lady Catherine began, her spoon posed above her waiting soup. "Collins told me that you refused yet another offer to work for me after graduation?"

Lizzie raised an eyebrow. "Why are you asking me if you already know the answer, Lady Catherine?"

The old Lady pursed her lips disapprovingly. "Because I do expect an answer from you, Miss Bennet?"

"Is this yet another question, Ma'am, or the answer already?", Lizzie retorted, taking a spoonful of her soup.

"No, I _do expect_ an answer, Miss Bennet!", the now red-faced Lady demanded while Lizzie – seemingly unperturbed – simply took another spoonful – sip – whatever the fuck one took from a soup, that tasted like a mix of cabbage, potatoes and white beans.

"To the question of whether or not I refused yet another offer?", Lizzie asked amusedly. "Yes, I did."

"But why?", the old Lady cried out and the tower of hair on her head wavered dangerously.

"Is _that_ the question now?", Lizzie demanded to know, barely hiding her smile in her napkin while Anne and Richard on the other side of the table also tried to suppress their laughter. Darcy on the other hand didn't make a sound.

"Yes!", her Ladyship cried out while the scarlet red tone of her skin slowly faded to a mere crimson.

"Well, why didn't you say that sooner?", Lizzie asked her with round, innocent blinking eyes and if she was not mistaken, even Darcy had to hide a smile.

"But that -" , the old Lady began, but was interrupted by Lizzie, who'd decided that she didn't like the game anymore.

"Well, as you see, Lady Catherine. I do already have an apprenticeship lined up", she explained in absolute delight and with a wide, toothy smile. "It's therefore impossible for me to accept one of your... _gracious_ offers."

"Aha." The old Lady pressed her lips together disapprovingly. "And please, tell me, Miss Bennet. _Where_ do you think to finish your education?"

The smile on Lizzie's lips grew even wider and Anne, who saw it coming, leaned forward to hide her own smile in her soup.

"With Seamus Groveland", Lizzie said slowly to give each syllable the meaning it deserved.

"Groveland?", Lady Catherine growled at the same time as Darcy perked up and asked "Seamus?".

Lizzie looked from one to the other in amusement. "Yes", she then said slowly to Darcy. "Seamus. Also called 'Mus' by his friends. The same guy with whom I always travel to Africa."

"Africa...", Darcy repeated with a frown as if that crossword puzzle in front of him had suddenly gained a few more columns.

"Yes, _Africa_", Lizzie replied, eyebrows knitted together. "Mus has build several hospitals in Kenya over the years."  
"I know", Darcy said, face still crinkled and the grip he had on his spoon intensified. "I helped -"

But whatever he'd wanted to say was drowned out by a scarlet red Lady Catherine, who looked like she was ready to spit smoke and fire.

"So you do know my brother-in-law, Miss Bennet?", she bit out, spoon held in hand like some kind of sceptre.

"Yes", Lizzie said unperturbed. "Even though the family relationship was lost one until today." She cast another glare at Anne, who just responded by simply lifting an eyebrow.

"So I take it, you also know Henrietta and Louisa, am I correct?"

"Yes", Lizzie smiled. "I was their babysitter for a while when Henry and Liam were younger. They're brilliant children, I have to say."  
"Aha", Lady Catherine said, her nose raised so high up in the air that one could nearly count all her nostril hairs. "My brother-in-law has always been a rather... _peculiar_ person", she announced to the whole room. "But I just can't fathom how you'd want to finish your education under such... _conditions_ when we're offering so many possibilities here -"

"A nurse strike?" , Lizzie asked with a raised eyebrow, believing to have seen Darcy's surprised smile flare up for a second.

"- in one of the top hospitals in the entire country. I beseech you, Miss Bennet, you wouldn't want to throw that all away for some third-class apprenticeship in some underprivileged country?"

"That, I think, is a matter of perspective _yet again_", Lizzie said decidedly. "And I wouldn't use the word "_third-class_" for any hospital, your brother-in-law has founded, Lady Catherine."

"Really?" The old Lady didn't sound impressed. "And what about the financial aspects?", she asked, waving Miss Dorothea over to clear the table and serve the main course. "A brilliant young lady such as yourself wouldn't want to deny herself the rightful reward she is due, would she?"

Lizzie's countenance became icy. "As you'll see, Lady Catherine, I don't care very much about the financial aspects of things."

The old Lady's eyebrows shot up almost comically high as her eyes widened.

"Really?", she asked again before her features smoothened and a glint appeared in her eyes, that was more than just a bit scary to Lizzie. "But yes of course", she then said. "You certainly grew up not having to care for such things. _Naturally_." Her gaze wandered over to Darcy next to her. "And from the looks of it you won't have to care about them in the future, too, am I not correct?" And she smiled so wide and so sugary sweet that Lizzie felt her stomach churn.

Yet again the gong sounded and with her usual sour expression did Miss Dorothea serve the main course – roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and potatoes – interrupting the current line of conversation in the process for a few precious seconds during which one was finally able to breathe.

"Lizzie", Anne began when all was ready to hinder her mother at preying on the girl again. "Did you hear that Charles Hayter thinks about proposing to Hetty even before the Easter holidays?"

"Really?", Lizzie asked, relieved about the change in topic. "I didn't know they were so serious yet."

"Well, he's following her like some lost puppy ever since primary school. Had to happen sooner or later, don't you think?"

"Rather later if you ask Mus, right?", Lizzie grinned between two bites of potato and vegetables – she didn't touch the meat, not even armed with both fork and knife.

"I think he resigned himself to his fate", Anne said mischievously. "After all he had had ten years to get used to the idea. Besides Hayter is "a good boy" if you can believe him", she shook her head. "Even though he still doesn't understand what on earth _media science_ is supposed to be."

Lizzie laughed softly while Richard leaned in, following their discussion with obvious interest. "What", he then said. "Do you want to tell me that little Henrietta Groveland – _rugrat Groveland_ – wants to step in front of the altar? Is that even legal?"

"Well, she is eighteen", Lizzie explained with a shake of her head. "But I also think it's bit early. They've barely been together for two months."  
"All the more reason to make it official", Lady Catherine blared between them. "It's just not right these days. The young people all live in sin for years and then everyone is wondering why on earth we have more single parents than -"

A collective sigh went around the table and Richard, who'd leaned back in his chair with an eye roll softly began singing and directing his fingers in time to Lady Catherine's tirade. _"The fear stricken, born again Christian, they got a vision a homogenized state. Texas textbooks, Bibles, and prayer books. They want them memorized, but don't want you to think..."_

Lizzie tried to keep a hold on herself and hide her bubbling laugher in her glass of water, but that didn't work out that well and only Darcy's hand on her back kept her from choking to death.

For a brief moment time seemed to stand still and Lizzie froze, still coughing yet holding her breath when she became aware of the hand on her bare skin, because the dress, Richard had selected for her, wasn't just scandalous because of its length or lack thereof, but also because it left most of her back bare and put the Phoenix-Tattoo on display.

"... _in the dust bowl, cerebral black hole, the average weight is well over 200 pounds.  
I hate to generalize, but have you seen the thighs? Most haven't seen their genitalia in a while_..."

"I understand the blue now, Miss Bennet", Darcy whispered, his hand lingering a moment to long on her skin, which seemed to have suddenly caught fire, even when she was – though way too fast, hastily and even choppily – able to breathe again. "Shadows", he whispered, tracing the column of her spine down with one finger – slowly and barely there – and when he finally put away his hand, she just sat there for a few seconds, a heavily breathing, oscillating pile of goo and melted bones while he just kept one dissecting his potatoes.

"- then why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?", Lady Catherine asked the group as a final conclusion. "Henrietta did just the right thing in my opinion."

"Well, I don't think you have to worry much about her", Anne said a bit distractedly, her eyes, so full of concern, on Lizzie, who was currently massacring her vegetables. "You should rather worry about Lou..."

"Why is that?", Richard asked, having finished his song just now. "What did the little redhead do this time?"

"Well", Anne said with a faint, pixie-like smile. "She has suddenly developed a rather intense interest in a certain Captain Benwick."

"Benwick?", Lizzie burst out. "But he's -"

"What? What about him?", Richard asked curiously, practically leaning over half of the table to hear the whole story. Darcy snorted quietly.

"He's -"

"- a rock singer -"

"- and he wears eyeliner -"

"- he got these strange trousers. Made of leather. He's practically wearing _lederhosen_", Lizzie explained.

"- and he got snake fangs as earings."

"He has tattoos."

" - many -"

" - _many_ tattoos."

"I think I like him", Richard announced, grinning widely. "May I please meet him sometime?"

"I don't think the world would survive that collision", Lizzie replied good-naturedly. "The two of you in one room? Are you sure that wouldn't explode? Especially because Benwick is rather ambivalent when it comes to his sexuality, much like you."

"Oh really?" Richard's eyes lit up. "Oh, please, please, can I meet him? I do like myself some tattoos..."

"Richard, explosion? The whole drama? Do you really want to risk it?"

"Hey, you and Darcy are also in one room and nothing's exploded thus far", Richard complained, pointing with his fork from her to her former Professor.

"Not yet", Lizzie bit out, scowling at him.

Darcy next to her snorted quietly. "We're a catastrophe waiting to happen", he explained straight-faced. "And do I understand that correctly? Save for his remarkable similarity to Richard, which is, frankly, rather disturbing, I admit, there's nothing else wrong with the guy?"

"Well", Anne said dryly. "He's also fifteen years older than her."

"What?", Lady Catherine, whose skin tone had swiftly changed towards the more magenta tones ever since she'd heard that titbit about the sexuality of her niece's lover, interjected. "Lecherous deviant! He should be stoned to death!"

"_Kanpai and bottoms up, unhelping hands hog tie you up. One bad deed surely deserves another._..", Richard began singing again, also in time to his aunt's tirade while Darcy leaned back in his chair.

"I don't quite understand the problem", he said and there was something in his voice that had Lizzie perk up. Was it irritation? Insecurity?

"Well", Anne said, her huge golden eyes flickering from Darcy to Lizzie and back again. "I'd say it's all a matter of... perspective."

"_So if you want rewards and consequence, they got the cool and unusual punishments. Get on your knees for Japanese instruction. Rope and Cigarette burns, forget about any health concerns. This is pure assisted self-destruction_...", Richard kept on singing, his eyes half closed, swaying in time to the music.

"Oh really?", Darcy asked, his eyes flickering over to Lizzie, who didn't understand what this conversation was about, but who also didn't have the time to think about it for too long since her Ladyship was already at the end of her tirade, which she concluded with a long, drawn-out sigh.

"Well, I really have to address that topic with Seamus", she announced. "Such a young thing spending time with some devil worshipper, that's just -"

"I'm sure, Mus will do whatever he thinks to be the right course of action", Lizzie said with a frown and a hard voice.

"Ah, Miss Bennet!", the old Lady cried out, smiling a sugary sweet while waving over Miss Dorothea to clear the table again. "I hope so... I do hope so."

"... _it's not fun until someone gets hurt. Who's the next to get hung from the ceiling_?", Richard finished his song, but this time he'd drawn his aunt's attention to himself and she was not a person to be trifled with.

"What are you talking about over there? Richard, what are you telling Anne and Miss Bennet?", she demanded to know and the glittering man rolled his eyes and sat up.

"Music, dear aunt", he then said and Lizzie had to bit her lip to keep herself from smiling. "We're talking about music."

"Oh, please continue! There's no one in the entire kingdom, who knows more about music. Or has better taste in it." Her gaze fell on Anne, who was also trying her hardest to keep herself from bursting out laughing. "And my dear Anne here... She would have been a great virtuoso if her health had only allowed her to play..."

Lizzie raised an eyebrow at the ambergirl. "Mother, I was never ill", Anne explained calmly. "Not to mention the fact that my feeling for music is restricted to duets under the shower, which break the mirror repeatedly."

"_Duets_?", Richard asked with a glint in his eyes. "Was that Freudian?"

Anne shot him a warning glare while Lady Catherine simply brushed off her protest with a shake of her hand. "Oh, pish-posh", she said. "You would have been a jewel."

"I like amber better", Anne protested, but her mother wasn't listening.

"Miss Bennet", she turned to Lizzie. "You can sure be the judge of that, can't you? I learned of your impressive life story from your file. Pray tell, do you still play?"

Lizzie, who'd grown deathly pale and was staring straight at her plate, wrung a short "No" from the depths of her throat.

"Miss Bennet, are you gifted in music?", Darcy asked, his surprise evident in his voice and took in Lizzie's white knuckles with a frown.

"Gifted?", Lady Catherine burst out laughing. "What an understatement! Miss Bennet was once thought of as a prodigy in the classic music scene, Darcy. She only gave few concerts, but all very much revered and desired." She shook her head and laughed again quietly. "Gifted, pfft!"

"You don't play anymore, Miss Bennet?", Darcy's voice reached her ear while the droning sound in her mind took overhand.

She shook her head hastily. "No", she managed to get out while her view became blurred.

"A prodigy, Papillon?", Richard asked and she heard the question behind the amusement, heard it through the veil while feeling Anne's concern like fingers on her skin.

"You just have to play for us, Miss Bennet!", Lady Catherine prompted her.

"No." She felt the panic rising inside her, the thought of putting her hands on those keys again was like hot lava burning through her veins.

"But you just have to, Miss Bennet!", the old Lady protested. "The pianoforte in the living room is tuned wonderfully and I'm sure we all -"

"No!" The panic had reached its peak and all there was left now were breaking waves after the endless spiral.

"No?", Lady Catherine repeated flummoxed and the others, too, with the exception of Anne, were looking at her strangely at the sight of her vehement rejection.

"No", Lizzie said and tried to take a breath.

"But why ever not?" The old Lady wasn't happy at not seeing her wishes fulfilled and she pushed out her lower lip sullenly.

Lizzie opened her eyes, the fog lifting and saw four pairs of eyes watching her closely. She smiled, a bit bitterly. "Because it breaks my fingers."  
A shock, gasping, breathing suddenly audible, Anne's glittering eyes and her sad smile.

The gong announcing dessert saved Lizzie.

"Well, Miss Bennet", Lady Catherine began again after those crystal bowls with fruit and ice were placed in front of them. "Your father is Thomas Arthur Bennet, am I not correct?"

Lizzie nodded, still a bit weary while her fork traced lines through the vanilla ice-cream. "Yes, that's correct."

"Does he still write? His theoretical considerations about the development of morals were extremely interesting."

Lizzie snorted quietly, Anne's softly whispered words of reassurance still ringing in her mind.

"No, I have to say that he's now focused on testing his theories in the real world", she replied, bitterness like citrus on her tongue. "It's _interesting_ in any case."

Lady Catherine seemed satisfied with that answer, because she turned to face Darcy .

"You must know Thomas Bennet, Darcy. You taught the subject, didn't you?"

"I know him indeed", Darcy said and Lizzie tried to breathe and keep calm. "His theories border on nihilism."

"And yet he'd never position himself quite so clearly", Lizzie retorted. "He likes to live a decision-less life."

"Wonderful family by the way", Lady Catherine chimed in. "Very old and well liked. They've been part of Morecambe Bay for hundreds of years, haven't they?"

Lizzie, who had the feeling of being an exhibit on some kind of meat market to be sold to the highest bidder, furrowed her brow. "Yes, that's true", she said shortly.

"Well, I must admit... The scandal surrounding you, Miss Bennet...It put me off at first, but then I remembered Anne and how rumours are seldom true and -"

"Mother!", Anne's outcry sounded through the fog in Lizzie's brain and she felt water invading her lungs and she was _drowning, drowning, drowning... _

" - tragic story, really. And so reprehensible if true, but -"

"What kind of scandal are we talking about here?" That was Darcy's voice. So far gone.

"Oh, it was about that Cavanaugh-boy. You know him, William. He was at the funeral and then followed you around for about a year. Don't you remember? You always -"

The fog grew thicker and faces and voices were only distant shadows now, barely coming close enough to touch her while her hands were becoming numb.

"- mother, that's really not -"

"- is also a med student, I believe. Darcy, didn't you -"

"Papillon, what is it, you look -"

"- were _engaged_, you see -"

"I have to go", she announced abruptly and _stood, fell, stumbled_, her chair somewhere behind her, _bolting, storming, running_ despite the other's vehement protests, with Anne right on her heels.

She didn't make it to the end of the hallway before the sharp, choking breaths, which the lack of oxygen demanded, wrecked and forced her on the floor and then she just sat there, a chaos of haphazardly mixed limbs and huge eyes, staring into darkness, while she fought for air.

_He knows him. He knows him. He knows him. He knows him. He knows him. He knows him._

That was the only thing running through her head while Anne knelt in front of her and held her head upright. That and the feeling as if the world was suddenly two sizes too small.

"You're not seventeen anymore", the ambergirl whispered without pausing while trying to fish her out of the ocean, trembling hands on way too cold skin. "Not seventeen anymore, not seventeen anymore... It's over, Lizzie."

But it wasn't over, was never over. Every time she thought she'd run far enough, had put enough distance between them, he came back, came always, _always_ back...

"I'm never getting rid of him", she whispered to Anne. "Never, never, never..."

And the ambergirl could only repeat, what she'd said before. That she wasn't seventeen anymore. That it was over. That the ghosts could only hurt her if she let them. All that just to get the girl out of the ocean.

And finally Lizzie grew calmer. And calmer. And then there were just breathing lungs. And breaths. And Anne's fingers around her head.  
"You can't keep going on like this!", they suddenly heard Lady Catherine's voice coming from the dining room and the old Lady sounded as if she'd skipped the crimson skin tones in favour of magenta ones. "It's been two years, Darcy, and you're still moping after Emily!"

"She's right, man", Richard interjected, somewhat calmer than his aunt, but his voice, too, was clearly audible. "You're burying yourself in your misery for two years now. It's time to fucking stop with that shit."

"And your idea of _therapy_ is pushing me towards a woman_ ten years my junior_?", Darcy thundered and Lizzie outside in the hallway froze.

"Goodness, William, don't get all excited. Ten years are nothing! Louis DeBourgh himself was nineteen years older than me!"  
"And what a lot of good that did", Anne muttered, but Lizzie didn't even react.

"Darcy, you know that my opinion doesn't always agree with social norms and all that nonsense, but Elizabeth is _twenty-three_ and -"

"- from an old, honourable family of more than considerable wealth and -"

"She's barely more than a _child_, Richard. All thoughts of age aside, sometimes she acts as if she's a _bloody twelve year old_!"

"You don't really believe that yourself, Darcy -"

" - father is _Thomas Bennet_!"

"She's still only twenty-three, Richard!"

"You were already _married_ by that age, Darcy! And you were raising Giana. Don't underestimate Lizzie only because you're bloody scared of getting hurt!"

" - and she'd be such a help for dear Georgiana. Do realize it, Darcy, you need a -"

"Darcy, Emily would've wanted -"

"_Don't you dare tell me anything about Emily_!", Darcy yelled and Lizzie, sitting there as stiff as a statue on the floor and listening on to their conversation, a just as motionless Anne beside her, jerked back when the door burst open and Darcy stormed out, sheer rage billowing around him.

"You!", he barked and Lizzie, feeling the panic rise inside her, scrambled back on her feet and backed off. "_Matthew Cavanaugh_!", he yelled. "What the fuck did you do to him?"

"William!", Anne cried out, trying to stop him, but he shoved her aside like she was nothing and made further steps towards Lizzie.

"What I did to him?", she asked when she'd finally found her voice again. "Nothing in comparison to what he did to -"

"Stop lying, okay?_ Just bloody stop lying_. He told me -"

"- I should stop? The king of the liars wants me to tell the truth? How absolutely -"

"- still mocking him? After all, that happened, you're still making fun of him? Don't you have any -"

He was so close now, _too close_ and only with great effort was she able to ring down the fog in her brain. She heard Anne's cries, saw Richard pulling at Darcy's arm to hold him back and overall Lady Catherine's screams, piercing through everything.

"Did you know what he did to me? Nothing, you know bloody -"

"- practically _left him at the altar_ -"

"- how many times I cried, how often I plead with him -"

"- took everything from him. Everything, Elizabeth. Don't you care at all? Are you really that -"

"- _broke my fingers_. What do you think this is?" She was tearing at her bandages. "Nice decorations? What do you believe -"

"- _killed_. That's what you did! How does it feel? How does it feel to be -"

The burning, boiling rage paled and in its place there was just pure exhaustion and she barely noticed the tears, streaming down her cheeks. Desperation. Absolute desperation.

" - _murderer_!", he yelled out, but then there was Anne, screaming and terrible and the little pixie in the pink dress lunged for him with curled fists, pushing him away from Lizzie, yelling that he knew nothing,_ knew absolutely bloody nothing about anything _and then there was Richard, leading away a trembling, deadly pale Lizzie, who was sobbing without crying, bringing her somewhere, where it was calm and empty and dark.

And then they were outside.

"_Shht_, Papillon", the glittering man said, placing her with her back against the roof top's balustrade on the floor. "Everything's alright now, darling. It's over."

Her breathing was rushed, choking and for a moment she thought she had to puke.

"It's over", Richard repeated, sitting down next to her. Carefully, so as not to touch her.

"That's what they all say", Lizzie managed to get out and pulled her knees towards her chest. "They all say it's over and then this happens and -" She took a deep breath. "What _the fuck_ was that?"

Richard sighed. "Darcy, when he's losing it."

"Wonderful", Lizzie snorted, slinging her arms around her upper body. Her ribs were hurting and her fingers were tingling when the numbness finally faded. "Just wonderful." Another breath intake. "Does he use people as punching bags on a regular basis or am I just an exception?"

Richard looked at her from the side, a hard line dividing his usually so amusedly winking face. "He didn't mean it like that, Papillon. Really, he -"

"- didn't mean it?" She snorted. "Richard, I heard that one too many times. It means bloody nothing."

Richard sighed. "He's not a bad person, Papillon. He's just used to doing things on his own. His life, his career, Georgiana... He's practically always been alone ever since his father died."

"Do you think that's an excuse?", Lizzie asked, picking at those satin ribbons around her wrists with another shaky breath. The anger was flaring up again, now that the acute panic was gone.

"No, Papillon." He softly tugged at one strand of hair before shrugging out of his jacket and placing it over her shoulders. "But today was an exception."

She poked him in the chest with one fingernail. "I heard that before.  
"Our aunt always brings him to the edge of his sanity."

"Heard that, too."

"Normally, he isn't -"

"Also heard that -"

"Did you hear that, too?", Richard interrupted her with more bite in his voice than she'd previously suspected he had. "A twenty-three year old raising his ten year old sister? Who goes through hell and high water for his friends and picks up their shit when they fuck up?"

"I heard that one, too, once."

"Oh, really?"

"Yup. Jesus. In the bible."

"Jesus has a sister?"

"Jesus is a saint. And apparently Darcy is one, too."

Richard laughed. "You really fault him for that, don't you? Oh, Papillon, he had to tell his best friend that his close-to-being-his-fiancé-girlfriend cheated on him with the director of the primary school she was working at. Didn't have any other option now, did he?"

She felt pure, hot rage boiling inside her, but she was just too bloody tired to let it out. "It wasn't his responsibility."

"Not his responsibility? Papillon, if that had been one of your friends, you would've gone to the barricades."

"He didn't have all the information", she insisted stubbornly. "He never has all the information." She shook her head. "You've seen it just now."

Richard sighed. "Did you ever thought about _giving_ him all the information necessary?", he asked. "So that he can make an informed decision and not -"

"- call me a murderer? It's not really an excuse now, is it?" She snorted.

The glittering man leaned back. "It's not easy for him to talk about Emily", he then said finally. "Add aunt Catherine to the mix and he's -"

"Who is Emily?", Lizzie interrupted him, her voice hard to hide the trembling.

"Papillon, that's not -"

"Richard, who the fuck is Emily?", she repeated.

The glittering man sighed. "She was his wife, Papillon."

"Did she leave him now? Is he suffering from a broken ego and fears of abandonment?", she snorted, wrapping the shimmering green jacket even more tightly around her body.

"Fear of abandonment, probably", Richard replied. "You would know all about that, wouldn't you, Papillon? But she didn't leave him, little butterfly. She _died_."

"Died...", Lizzie repeated tonelessly while something cold began to spread in her stomach.

"How? I mean... When? _Why_?"

"Car crash", Richard said seriously. "Two years ago." He sighed. "She was such a nice little thing. Pretty little bee..." He nudged her. "She looked just like you, Papillon."

_She looked just like you..._ The coldness in her stomach became an icy fist clenching her guts and Lizzie gritted her teeth so tightly that her jaw began to hurt. _She looked just like you..._

There was a pretty simply reason Lizzie Bennet didn't like to talk about herself. Nearly just as simple as the reason why she in turn also didn't want to know everything about fellow human beings.

Because once you had a taste of the tree of knowledge, you could never go back to being ignorant.

You could never become innocent again.

And then suddenly, while they were sitting in the cold and darkness, thinking about how much this felt like the edge of the apocalypse, not knowing that this wasn't the end but just beginning, their pagers began ringing.

And just wouldn't _stop_.

* * *

**A/N: So all of the above... it was planned. Like, for months and I about bored everyone to tears because I was so damn excited about it. Lunatic even. Like Dr. Kramer (name's from the guy, who wrote Malleus Maleficarum, yes _that_ book about witches and how to kill them).  
**

**Next time, we'll change POVs. And I'm giddy about writing it. Any ideas? **

**Btw. I'm thinking about posting some dirty and not so dirty poems (from Darcy's perspective) on Tumblr over the next weeks until the next chapter and probably more song quotes of what I'll listen to to get the writing done. Anyone interested? **

**Love, as always (thanks as always for the reviews, I replied to as many as possible, but lots of them were anonymous or had a disabled messaging feature, so I'm sorry) **

**Teddy **


	26. Chapter 25 A Tree of Knowledge

**A/N: So this is it. William Darcy. **

**Soundtrack: A lot, lot, lot from Blue October and Airborne Toxic Evenet (I got a whole 100 tracks Playlist for this chapter) and Snow Patrol's Disaster Button**

**I posted teasers for this on tumblr if anyone's interested just follow me there and I might keep this up (I'm also holding back a GIF of Lizzie/Darcy kissing for the moment we might need it;)**

**Disclaimer: I've got a pink umbrella with "Fuck me dead" written on the side in black calligraphy. It was a present. Don't ask. On the other side, I don't own Austen, not even the part where Darcy says "Fuck" in this one. **

* * *

**Chapter 25: A Tree of Knowledge  
**

William Darcy knew a lot of things about Lizzie Bennet.

He knew that she was loud, brash and stubborn, as if she just liked to contradict everything coming her way out of pure spite only to turn around and watch the collision like a crazy chemical experiment gone awry to see if it resulted in an interesting reaction – the more explosive the better – at which point she'd raise an eyebrow, take in the smoke and the soot-black faces around her and bemusedly wonder what the hell they'd been thinking – _because why bloody jump if someone told you to_?

He knew that she had four sisters, even if he didn't know how exactly she counted his cousin among them, knew that Jane was the oldest and the complete opposite of her, knew that Miss Bennet's father was a highly controversial philosopher, whose works he'd banished from his curriculum, because the resulting implications were mostly unacceptable and much too ambiguous for a group of aspiring medics, whose moral development began at six o'clock in the morning with visitations and stopped with the end of their shift late into the evening – a fact, that was practically a waiting disaster, centring itself implosion-like on one person this evening, a time bomb, that had begun ticking with the clanking of champagne flutes earlier until another three words – or perhaps just one – had shot the shell and then – a cut like hot, blinding light, biting and sharp – and he was standing in one of the dark hallways of his aunt's suite of rooms while the sharp claws of his normally so docile, elf-like cousin were scratching across his face and he thought about the fact that there were exactly seventeen freckles scattered across Lizzie Bennet's nose and cheekbones.

Darcy had no idea how he knew that.

"You idiot!", Anne hissed, her face distorted by rage and he probably would have been afraid, would've jerked back and ordered the nurse to give him some sedative shot – _seventy bloody milligram propofol –_ in order for him to shoot them up her upper arm and choke those angrily hissed words in a foggy kind of presyncope if he hadn't been numb himself, dazed and confused like a man half drowned breaking through the water's surface to directly stare at the completely aghast face of a girl – _woman, child, whatever_ – with her skin so pale in terror that the seventeen freckles, scattered in an arch across her face, looked painted on.

Seventeen freckles, five on one cheek, six on the other and the rest criss-cross on the bridge of her nose.

"You have no right to accuse her of anything. Of nothing. _Nothing at all_!", Anne yelled, still filled with rage. The memory of her being afraid of her own bloody shadow was pale and fleeting, the lowest layer under those thousand, that cover up impressions of people over the years, more background colour than contour and it surprised and astonished him on some level, one as far away from conscious feeling as the four scratches on the right side of his face.

"Don't you understand bloody _anything_?", she screeched, her voice damn near hysterical, threshing his upper body with those tiny fists in some doomed to failure attempt at shoving him backwards, but the laws of physics made it impossible for her to move him even two inches in either direction. "Can't you just fucking listen to what people tell you?"

She sounded frustrated and he could understand the emotion rather well. Frustration was something he could work with, something he could identify and understand since it had been a near constant companion from the moment on, when a dark-haired, not-even-measuring-up-to-his-shoulder-tiny girl had planted herself in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest and bloody asked him, if, andpray tell_, where_ he'd left his manners on the way.

It took him a moment to realise that she was barefoot and wearing a blue summer dress, that barely reached her knees.

And that, apparently, she didn't wear anything beneath it.

Nothing _at all_.

He curled his hands into fists, knowing that his thoughts were close to giving in and going down in spirals and he focused his eyes on Anne.

"What is it, that I don't understand?", he bit out, realising that he was losing his grip on reality rather quickly. Anne froze, now totally out of concept with her hand hovering in the air between them, ready to strike and protect her sister again.

"You -"

"_Explain it_. You've got two minutes", he barked, his patience and nerves close to another collapse.

Her eyes narrowed into tiny slits, an intense amber-gold coloured glint practically leaking out of them and then she smiled and it was surreal.

"I only need thirty seconds", she announced and before he could prompt her to please get on with it then, she'd grabbed him by the collar of his dress shirt and tugged him down to her level rather unceremoniously.

"Lizzie Bennet doesn't lie", she hissed, rolling and tasting every syllable in her mouth as if they were bloody pralines.

"How should that -"

Anne shook her head, a sardonic smile playing around her lips before the grip on his collar intensified and nearly cut off his air supply.

"Lizzie Bennet", she repeated, measuring each word, "_doesn't lie_."

"I don't understand -"

A groan - "_God,_" - Frustration, so wonderfully well known. "She doesn't lie, Darcy. Lizzie... _she just doesn't do it._"

He blinked, froze, felt like a veil was lifted and the world around him was moving, slowly and aching and then clicking into place.

"Shit!", he cursed, cruder than he usually was, tugging on the roots of his hair while the sinking feeling in his stomach began to spread like it was at fucking home there.

Lizzie Bennet didn't lie. She evaded and deflected, telling half-truths as if she were the fucking _fairy queen_ and if someone pushed her into a corner with no way out then she'd keep silent, so stubbornly and determinedly, with her chin raised high in the air that it was like the fucking _conquest of Fort Knox_ when it came to luring the words out of her.

She was a master at ignoring. Every damn time they'd met in the context of Jane and Charlie's relationship, she'd made a point of ignoring him until _he'd_ ignore her in turn at which point she'd turn around and do anything to annoy him – he swore, she'd hummed Pink Floyd's "_Another Brick in the Wall_" for an entire car ride_ for that sole purpose_.

Lizzie Bennet was unbelievably frustrating. But she didn't lie.

"Shit? That word doesn't even capture it, you idiotic excuse of an imbecile!", Anne hissed. "You just marched up here and called a girl close to a fucking panic attack a murderer! A murderer, William! Have you lost your bloody -"

"He told me so", Darcy cut her off with a frown, realising how weak that actually sounded. "Cavanaugh repeated it over and over again, he was so -"

He stopped, remembering the words, the story the boy had told him again and again in the time after Emily's funeral in an attempt at distracting him from his own grief and how strangely bizarre – how absolutely bloody absurd – and _flesh -, bone-, marrow-deeply_ disturbing it had been to discover that the Eve, the she-devil, the fucking enemy image in his mind was the same person as the girl he -

"I wouldn't have thought you so gullible", Anne interrupted him and the light tone of her voice belied the steel in her eyes. "Lizzie always told me what a complete _moron_ you were, but I overlooked it since she's not always the most _reliable_ narrator, but now -"

"I know though -", he protested, but was cut off yet again when Anne's hovering and was curled into a fist, her eyes lighting up and the pleasant tone of her voice once again became a menacing, bone chilling hiss.

"Do you also know that you promised to kill him?", she asked and he froze. "The morning after you picked her up at that club, you swore that you'd _kill_ the one responsible for doing that to her! _Do you remember_, William Darcy?"

"I -", he stammered, eyes wide open when the thundered words catapulted him back to that morning when she'd stood between him and that wall, nearly scaring him to death and beyond when she'd jerked back from him like a frightened, kicked animal and he'd witnessed panic attacks before – _fuck_ – he'd had a few of his own, but it had been so god damn _wrong_, a violin out of tune in a concert hall, because someone as _brave_ and _fearless_ as Lizzie Bennet shouldn't look so bloody _helpless_.

"And I hope for your sake that you were bloody serious, because if I hadn't chosen the path of _non-violence_ -"

He scoffed, pointing at his cheek reflexively, and Anne scrunched up her nose.

"Temporary insanity", she brushed it off. "And I'd plead it again when it came to Cavanaugh but with that utter _bastard_ I want to be in my right mind to _rip off each and every single one of his fingers separately._" She breathed in deeply and tried to calm herself. "But I can't and I won't do that, because violence is no god damn solution and there are always as many perspectives to a story as there are parties involved and -", she cut herself off. "That's why you have to do it, Darcy. Perhaps not literally, perhaps the god damn metaphor and the symbolism of cut off limbs will be enough -"

"But why is -"

"_Because the day, you told her that, was the first and only time she admitted to having feelings for you_!"

The only thing audible in the silence was Anne's erratic breathing and Darcy felt the splitting, the dissociation as if someone had descended with a sword upon him and had cut him - Solomon style - in half and off – _and no, you're no longer part of this world _– damned and abandoned him where he was so far, so far away from everything that he couldn't even hear the blood rushing to his head.

"And then you left...", Anne's voice penetrated the fog around his mind and he barely, _barley_ heard her, because the image of Lizzie Bennet's deathly pale face and the bitter taste of guilt and shame on his tongue overwhelmed him and only the shrill ringing of his pager could force him back into reality.

"I have to go", he said curtly, turning around and leaving Anne and a fainting Lady Catherine in Miss Dorothea's arms behind and then half ran through the dark hallways, back outside and then over to the A&amp;E.

He barely managed to exchange his dress shirt and jacket for hospital scrubs and put on the overthrow and gloves required in the A&amp;E before the first ambulance pulled in and the paramedic jumping out pushed the chart into his waiting hands.

"What do we have here?", he asked calmly and controlled and damn it that's why he did his job, that's why he bloody _loved_ his job, because while everything around him just blew up and went to hell, William Darcy would keep his calm.

"Twenty-six year old woman heavily injured after car crash on Vauxhall Bridge Road close to the Thames. Injuries on head, upper body and extremities, probably internal injuries, pulse rate is -"

The paramedic's wildly spit out facts faded into the background for a moment when he saw Richard and Lizzie running out of the A&amp;E's entrance towards him and even though they'd exchanged their evening attire for hospital scrubs much like Darcy, she still wore that blasted lipstick and -

"What is she doing here?", he practically yelled at Richard before he could think about it and out of the corner of his eyes he saw her surprised, slightly hurt face before it was replaced by sullen determination and she raised her chin defiantly.

"We were called", she said delicately with a satisfied glance at the scratches on his cheek and then wrinkling her nose and expertly implying the left out slur at the end before turning around to run over to the second ambulance, which had just pulled into the driveway.

"_Moron_", Richard muttered, shaking his head in resignation. "Just leave her the bloody hell alone", he added before running after Lizzie to help get out the second stretcher with a much shorter, much smaller person on it.

"- boy has to be her son", one of the paramedics said at that moment and nodded over to the other ambulance while they were pushing their own patient into the A&amp;E at a quick pace. "Four years old or so. No severe injuries. The mother was conscious for a few moments and could answer some questions. We suspect she's four or five months pregnant, but we -"

The rest passed in a rush, a flurry of orders, hands cutting and shoving tubes and needles into a body to fill it with enough medication so that it would survive the short trip to the OR and the ensuing operation.

_If_ it did that is.

Darcy knew that the injuries were severe, broken ribs, one punctured lung, internal bleeding and head injuries and that was all he could diagnose superficially and he tried not to think about the chances of the both of them – mother and child – surviving, while his hands had a life of their own and did, what they could do best.

And yet he'd been so close to turning his back on medicine. After all that happened to Giana, he'd felt like a hypocrite every time he'd entered an A&amp;E not to mention an OR and when the offer to teach ethics at a London med school had reached him, it had seemed like the last possibility for him to do at least something without tainting his hands with blood and perhaps try to keep aspiring doctors from making the same mistakes.

But then Lizzie Bennet, clad in an oversized, grey sweatshirt and with her hair like a bird's nest piled on top of her head, had walked into the lecture hall and _he'd_ _remembered her_ from the night before and she'd stood there and in his attempt at _not being a hypocrite_ she'd called him exactly that, an actor, a liar. And he'd wanted to call her the same, to figure out her secret just as quickly and surely as she'd found his weak spot, but Lizzie Bennet _didn't bloody lie_.

He could see her through the small window facing the other trauma room while the nurse was trying to get an OR ready and he averted his gaze quickly.

Lizzie Bennet was a distraction, was personified hell ever since she'd seen her for the first time in that seedy Pub in London together with Richard and for a brief, mentally unstable moment he'd thought he'd seen Emily, because she got the _same fucking hair colour_ and the _same eye colour _and could have been her_ bloody twin_ in every other aspect and she'd smiled at him and raised her chin and he'd turned around, trembling and completely out of his bloody mind and then she'd _gone home with Richard_ and when she'd stood in front of him the next morning, daring and mocking, and introduced herself as Miss Bennet, he'd wanted to shake and shout at her, because she looked_ just like_ Emily, but she _wasn't_ Emily and it had become painfully, _painfully_ clear with every defiant, yet brilliant answer she'd given and when she'd also been there that very evening – because furies didn't just leave you alone once they'd tasted blood – he'd been angry, because she wasn't Emily and she wasn't wearing a bloody bra and she was his student and a fucking pain in the neck and _no, Charlie, I don't want to dance with her, thank you very much. _

His friend had muttered something along the lines of "Suit yourself" and disappeared to stare nauseatingly at his new love, Jane, who was so utterly unreal that Darcy sometimes had the feeling of just looking through her, a much too perfect paper figure with a fitting name and the only reason he could, in fact, remember it, because nameless female patients and corpses were also called Jane Doe.

On the other side, her sister was the ghost of his dead wife so perhaps it did run in the family.

"We're ready to go", the nurse interrupted his thoughts and he nodded, checking the data once again before they rolled the stretcher with the pale, red-haired woman, who disappeared under all those tubes, on it out of the room. "Everything's ready. Murphy's assisting."

"The next of kin are informed?", Darcy asked with a glance at the small boy in the other trauma room, he was injured and covered in blood, but conscious and rapidly talking to Lizzie, who he'd pulled towards him by grasping at her sleeve and didn't seem to want to let go.

The nurse nodded. "The husband is on his way", she said and Darcy felt the sinking feeling in his stomach spread again at the thought of what it was like standing on the other side of those glass doors and not being able to do a _bloody thing_. The absolute loss of control had gutted him and forced him on his knees and afterwards there'd only been numbness and then disorientation, because what was he supposed to do now? He'd done everything listened in his life plan; a job, career, marriage, children – all of it had worked somehow and he'd been able to make it through every crisis - his parents' death, Wickham - and with the exception of the children part of that life plan it had all run smoothly, only that last piece of the puzzle had not, because topsy-turvy and out of order he and Emily had raised a child – his ten year old orphaned sister – from the beginning of their marriage and when they'd been ready, when they'd been three, four months into the desired pregnancy and he'd been so close to having it all, someone had snapped their fingers, a fucking Dumbledore with his lighter and everything was blank and empty – and _no, you didn't really think you could have it all, did you now?_ \- and they'd set him back to bloody zero, to do it all again as if it were some bullshit computer game where you'd forgotten to save the score and even if he was only thirty and young by many standards, he'd already lived a full life, had already done it all and it had been just a series of tasteless, macabre déjà-vu sequences and he just _hadn't seen the bloody point in it. _

And then she had shown up. With hazelnut coffee and sarcasm and inappropriate comments and more vibrancy and spark than a whole bloody New Year's firework altogether and he'd been _staring_.

Goodness, how he'd been staring.

Until Charlie had kicked him in the side with one elbow that weekend when they'd all gone out to Kensington Gardens and he'd been sitting on the lawn and watching Lizzie Bennet inspect flower after flower and his friend had hissed at him to just please _tone it the fuck down_, because one might think he were dying from dehydration and she were the last damn glass of water in a ten mile radius and that it was fucking _creepy_.

So when Darcy had told him in reply that Charlie was watching Jane in much the same way, his friend had looked at him as if he was about to go down the rabbit hole and didn't want to shove him and then, very slowly and deliberately, he'd said "_Exactly_" as if he were a complete imbecile.

Darcy had completely disregarded it, because Lizzie Bennet was just so wholly _inappropriate_. She had no bloody concept for neither _politeness_ nor _manners_ – not to mention punctuality – no patience for the mere thought of it, not to forget that the idea of hairstyles surpassing a barely held together nest on top of her head or the existence of mere fucking _underwear_ – because why the fuck shouldn't she walk around in tight, nearly see-through white tank tops without a bra on?– _yeah, why the bloody hell not? _\- not to mention clothing, that didn't include ripped black tights and heavy, black combat boots barely held together by three or four safety pins on a regular basis, seemed to be completely foreign to her.

To sum it up: Lizzie Bennet was a walking, talking _disaster_ concerning each and every detail, his mother had ever drilled into his head about etiquette and decorum. A bloody living and breathing antithesis, one moment jumping around like the damn bunny from Alice in Wonderland for whatever god damn reason _really_ _fucking delighted _that it was raining in _bloody London _of all places and that she was absolutely_ soaking wet _and _dancing_ in the middle of the street, which had him so far as to categorize her somewhere between a stupid school girl and a yet free-running mentally ill, _fucking next candidate_ for Rosing's psychiatric ward when she'd started to bloody _recite_ the name of every god damn flower and herb they passed in Kensington Gardens in fucking _Latin_ like it was bloody normal for one to do so and shocked him to the core with the simple act of _trusting_ him despite all evidence to the contrary and George fucking Wickham's charm working its blasted magic against him.

As if it were that easy. As if you could just stand up, stretch out a hand and say "I trust you" as if it were bloody _natural_ and not completely _naïve_, not to mention downright dangerous, because he was not a good person and if Wickham was the devil's god damn advocate then he wasn't just a bloody hypocrite, but one of those damned archangels, who spilled just as much blood with their swords despite their good intentions – so _fuck _good intentions. Set them on bloody fire and watch them burn, because _Kant was wrong _and motivations _didn't mean a thing_ when it comes to hurting the ones you love.

They were in the middle of rolling the patient into the OR when the sound of hurrying feet and the rushed outcry of "Wait!" stopped them and when he turned around halfway, he saw Lizzie Bennet in scrubs and with her hair all crazy and deep red lipstick on her bloody lips, running towards him, a chart in hand – _and seventeen fucking freckles on her nose_ – with Richard right behind her.

"Wait!", she called out again, panting slightly. "Did you inform her husband already?", she asked the nurse and Darcy felt irritation rising inside him when she didn't even look at him.

The nurse nodded. "Yes", she said. "He's on his way and -"

"Don't let him see her", Lizzie demanded, her breath hurried and panicked and one arm holding her side as if she'd just run a bloody 800 meter sprint. "Don't let him see her and her son, he's -"

"Richard, what's this about?", Darcy demanded to know from his cousin and saw Lizzie narrow her eyes angrily when he ignored her in turn. "What the fuck is she -"

"Can't you see that?", Lizzie interrupted him and despite the nurse's rather vocal protests, she bent down over the patient and held up her arms, pushing back the hospital gown and revealing the blue and green shimmering bruises there. "These injuries are not from the car crash -"

"How can you be sure about that? We don't even know the exact -"

"Most of them are blue, Darcy. _Use your fucking head for once!_", she yelled at him, all flashing eyes and curled fists and just as vociferously pugnacious as she'd been that night when she'd kicked him out of her apartment,

"Haematoma turn from red to blue after two days", Richard interjected quietly, still sticking out like a sore thumb with the eyeliner and the pink fingernails despite him wearing scrubs like the rest of them and Darcy saw the nurse shooting him more than one bewildered glance. "They turn green and then yellow only after another few days." He pointed to the unconscious woman's bare arms. "We've got layered haematoma from different dates _not_ resulting from the crash and -"

"That doesn't mean anything!", Darcy interrupted him. "And with all due respect, Richard, we've got a patient in dire need of an operation and I won't keep her husband, who's probably sick with worry from seeing -"

"She's been to the A&amp;E twenty-seven times in the past year alone!", Lizzie Bennet screamed with the chart in her hand, with which she all but smacked him round the head with. "Broken wrists, noses, fingers, cheekbones... once someone kicked her so hard in the abdomen that it resulted in internal bleeding!" Her voice shrilled and failed and she tried to take a breath, looking like she was close to hyperventilating any second now. "And her son repeats the same story over and over again about how he_ rammed the fork in Daddy's neck so that he'd stop hurting Mummy and that he's so afraid of what's going to happen now and the paramedics say that she was driving seventy miles per hour on the fastest way out of the city and -_" She screamed, gurgled and tugged on her hair in frustration and Darcy, standing there and feeling as if someone had brained him with his aunt's ten pound bible, blinked from Lizzie to the patient to both their wrists and then there was Anne's voice in his head "_and you swore you'd kill him for what he did to her_" and then it clicked and the world snapped into place again and he cursed himself for being so bloody stupid.

It had been so clear all along.

"Get her away from here!", he shouted at Richard, who now wrapped both his arms around a hysterically screaming Lizzie, who was struggling and kicking and trying her fucking best to escape him, because she couldn't go now, _she wouldn't go now_ and Darcy suppressed any feeling of jealousy over the fact that she let Richard touch her and not him, because Lizzie had to get away from here _now_ and he ordered the nurse or Richard or fucking anybody to get security and keep away the husband and then they were rolling the patient into the OR and he was busy cleaning and sterilizing his hands and what had once been all calm and routine and thoughtfulness was now chaos, was pandemonium inside his head and body and he could barley keep his hands still when the nurse put on the gloves and only when he finally held the scalpel in his hand, was he calm.

Was he finally, _finally_ calm.

William Darcy knew a lot of things about Lizzie Bennet. He knew that she loved artificially coloured cornflakes with rather perverse delight, that she ate everything uniting both sugar and said artificial colours until her tongue shimmered in all the colours of the rainbow and that she didn't eat any meat besides some chicken or fish here and there.

He readied himself for the first cut.

He knew from the times they'd both sat together with the others in the cafeteria for lunch or whatever time of day it had been, gossiping about Lady Catherine and those other two constantly arguing trainees doing unmentionable things in the storeroom that she did in fact _eat_, but never much and was mostly picking at her salad and stealing chips from Richard and leaving half-full plates behind, a silent reminder of the shock he'd felt the moment he'd seen her again after a bit over a month and she'd been so _thin_, so_ awfully, awfully thin_.

Cutting, sucking, stitching, his working hands soon got him back to that old, well-known calm he needed to sort out his thoughts and he relished in it.

Darcy knew that she was brilliant, that all the other professors were so effusive in their praise of her that one might think them to be a bunch of thirteen-year-old-groupies and that he was never sure if she was _joking_ or _attacking_ or offering some kind of _truth_ in all of this, which so seldom made sense to him and almost always only when he'd become the punchline of one of her jokes yet again.

The machines were beeping, shrilling and rushing to heights, where they shouldn't bloody be, but he stayed calm and cut and sucked and stitched, quickly and quietly in rhythm to his thoughts.

He knew about her fascination with bracelets of any kind and what he'd thought to be slightly irritating and then discarded as rather obstructive and a habit she'd soon grow out of, had more and more become quite the mystery, because the clanking bracelets or bandages or bangles seemed to be more protection than anything else and he understood their purpose at the same time he noticed her shying away from any kind of physical contact rather notoriously and even disentangled herself from her friends' or her sister's embraces so quickly as if she'd just been burned.

And the question had burned just as much on his tongue, an itch he couldn't get rid of and he'd deluded himself into thinking that he was just being _curious_ and _protecting_ and that it didn't mean a thing at all when she nearly had him snort with laughter that day she'd been singing a song about _blood_ at a _blood donation_ and - William Darcy knew that there were seventeen freckles dancing over Lizzie Bennet's face, five on one cheekbone, six on the other and the rest on the bridge of her nose.

He bloody knew that.

The nurses around him became hectic when they couldn't stop one of the bleedings directly and there was _blood, blood, blood_ and Murphy, the junior doctor, was sweating while Darcy didn't even blink an eye, because he was calm and thinking and his fingers were working and _cutting, sucking, stitching_.

He knew that the moment he'd sent his sister a photo of the sunrise over Rosings Hospital somehow catching Lizzie Bennet, leaning against the roof tops balustrade, on it – b_ecause it was the only therapy-approved way of communication they were still using these days _– and Giana had broken her silence and sent him a text for the first time in _months_, asking three words – _Who is she? _\- the first impulse had been to answer with just one word: _Everything_.

It was about the freckles. The seventeen bloody freckles.

He knew that there was something, something, that had happened so long ago, an earthquake in the ocean floor resulting in a tsunami and still eliciting aftershocks and the pieces of the puzzle were there and only needed to be put together.

Seventeen _freckles_.

A father, whose philosophical direction was characterized by not participating and simply watching.

A sister, compensating for perfection, paling and nearly disappearing in it.

A boy, crying about his long lost love, who'd left him broken-hearted and alone, taking everything and leaving nothing.

And on the other side, a girl, who didn't speak and didn't want to be touched, who at the same time was so taken up in life and lived on the edge of it all, who cherished loyalty about everything and broke down every time his name was mentioned.

_Seventeen freckles. _

All in all it was a pretty easy equation if one eliminated the redundancies and while he was cutting, sucking, stitching and the patient's heart rate was stabilizing, Murphy wiping the sweat off his brow and the nurses calming down, some kind of clarity was forming in his mind.

For the first time in a long while.

And when, with the orchestra's final note, he put the final stitches in the wound, effectively ending the concert and left the OR, it was half past three in the morning and Richard was waiting outside, silent and watching like only Richard could do in his serious moments, slowly blinking eyes, seeing so much more than one was comfortable with and just as silently mocking him for the four scratches on his cheek while they were making their way up to Human Resources.

Lizzie Bennet's file wasn't hard to find and they didn't need one of Richard's numerous gadgets to open any locks. Collins must have kept it ready for Lady Catherine's purposes, because it was waiting open on top of the little man's deserted desk and attached to it was her medical history.

They didn't waste time with trivial information, instead they quickly paged down to summer 2009 and there in June/July of the same year, where according to Matthew Cavanaugh's story the note "_abruptio graviditatis" _ should have beenapplied, an admission to the A&amp;E was mentioned due to heavy cramps and bleedings and then the conclusive word "_abrasio"_.

"Motherfucker!", Richard let out when Darcy showed him the page and Darcy understood the notion even if he'd probably have worded it differently.

Richard took the file and paged a few pages up. "She's never been to a hospital since her birth", he noted. "Until the autumn of 2008 and from then on until that last note in 2009 she's been to the A&amp;E about twelve times. Small things. Broken fingers, bruises, one broken wrist in spring 2009...", his voice diffused and Darcy curled his hands into fists. "And ever since then only a couple of shots and medication against malaria and the like for her trips to Africa."

Darcy nodded and closed his eyes for a moment. "So Cavanaugh lied."

"About the whole story." Richard grimaced. "I never liked the little shit."

Darcy snorted. "I wish I had your instincts."

"Would get you less premature grey hairs."

A nod and a face buried in hands. "Where is she now?"

His cousin hesitated. "Darcy, I don't think that's a good -"

"Where is she, Richard?", Darcy interrupted him indignantly, glowering at him when he didn't answer him immediately.

"On-call-room. Third floor." A frown. "Darcy, I don't think you understand -"

"I understand it." He threw the file containing the words, that had transformed most of his actions into the fumbling work of a complete imbecile, back down on the desk. "Richard, I understand it now, okay? I understand why -"

"No, you bloody don't! Darcy -" But Darcy wasn't listening anymore, instead he'd stormed out of the office and Richard could only helplessly watch the catastrophe in front of him unfold.

For William Darcy something had been decided the moment she'd told him that she trusted him. Something had also been decided the moment she'd begged him not to leave.

And the he'd left. Because Jane and Charlie had happened and there'd been no rationally justifiable reason to stay and he'd spent the whole bloody month and Christmas listening to the songs from Lizzie's iPod on repeat, which he'd sneaked from Jane's computer, and he was pretty sure that Lizzie had tried to tell her sister something with that weird mix of Punk and Indie and obscure bands and song titles reminding him of poems and yet seeming so absolutely senseless, but he hadn't been sure and it had driven him crazy and he just _didn't didn't didn't _know and he _wanted_ to know and when his aunt had offered him the temporary job at Rosing's A&amp;E, he'd jumped at the chance like one dying with thirst at the last bloody glass of water on this planet.

And then she'd been there. Under the chandeliers in a green dress and she'd given him her shoes so that he could find her again. _Tomorrow_, she'd said and when he cast a glance at the clock on the wall, seeing how the black hand had passed the four and was now moving onto the five and how the oppressing black outside paled into a lighter dark blue, he realised that maybe, _maybe_ they'd reached _tomorrow_ now.

He was practically running down the hallways and up the stairs, the notes to one of the songs from Lizzie's playlist in his mind and then there was the on-call-room, pulling at him like a magnet and when he opened the door, Lizzie was there with her hair wet and no make-up on and in scrubs, that practically fell from her shoulders –_ and seventeen bloody freckles on her cheeks and nose_ – and her eyes grew wide when she saw him and she opened her mouth to say something, but he didn't let her, instead he came closer and _closer_ -

And then he kissed her.

Because even though William Darcy knew a lot of things about Lizzie Bennet, thousand details and parts of equations painting pictures like mosaics on the walls of his mind, he actually didn't know anything.

_Nothing at all. _

* * *

**A/N: I played with the themes of knowing/not knowing and nothing at all in this one. Writing long winded sentences with two many subordinate clauses where you loose your subject after a while was really fun.  
**

**As always, I can't promise a quick update. **

**Love, Teddy **


	27. Chapter 26 Paradise Lost

**A/N: So I got a bit of a break before I have to get back to do doing essays on gifted childrens measly social problems. God fucking dammit, what a load of bullshit... **

**So. This is it. This is Hunsford. Proceed at your own risk. Honestly.**

**Soundtrack: Nine Crimes - Damien Rice, The Lightning Bolt and Fallen Empires - Snow Patrol, ****The Way It Ends - Landon Pigg, In My Veins - Andrew Belle, Samson - Regina Spektor**

**Disclaimer: I got a wall covered in figures from health psychology and too much of an aversion against educational psychology to actually do any work. Owning Austen doesn't fall into that category, much like owning P&amp;P doesn't. **

* * *

**Chapter 26: Paradise Lost**

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 07:36 am **

_**-Click **_

"_**You've reached Elizabeth Theodora Bennet. I'm sorry to inform you that you managed to move your call into a one-way street and there are no possibilities to turn around safely for the next two miles. So please contact a towing service to get your vehicle safely out of the danger zone."**_

_**-Bleep **_

"**Lizzie, it's Anne. Richard called me. He was concerned, told me that you and Darcy had a fight and that it wasn't _pretty_ – whatever that's supposed to mean. Lizzie, what happened? Richard said you should be home by now, but you're neither here nor at Craig's or home in your shoebox of an apartment...**

**Lizzie? Lizzie, please call me. I'm worrying after what happened last night... **

**So please, please call me -"**

_**-Bleep**_

* * *

_There were moments like train wrecks. As if sitting in the control cabin of an express train and actually seeing the car stuck at the railway crossing and you're trying to stop, but the train is too fast and the car too close and there is just no time -_

_She'd opened her mouth to speak. There was something in the way he was looking at her, something determined and slightly desperate filling her with panic, because it didn't give her a choice and then there was his hand curled around her neck, holding her head and with the other one he grabbed her hip and pulled her towards him and - _

_And then he kissed her._

_And it was horrible and so heartbreakingly perfect that she wanted to cry, because it tasted like the end. _

_Dark and bitter and salty. _

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 09:42 am**

_**-Click **_

"_**Congratulations. You've accomplished another step on the list of "How to contact Lizzie Bennet" and you're now recorded on her answering machine. Next, please dye your hair green and wait at the café down the street for further instructions."**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**Lizzie, where are you? I just went to Lydia's and kept her and vampire boy from some kind of weird, disturbing foreplay only to be told by your sister that she – and that's a quote – has _no idea where her boring, older sister is_. Charlotte and Collins haven't got a clue either and we're all bit on the tetchy side and if you don't call me in, let's say,_ thirty bloody minutes_, then I'm getting them all, including Mus, Sophie the twins and -**

**-_Bleep_ **

* * *

_He'd told her that, had whispered those three words in between two hastily breathed breaths and one small bite to her lower lip and she froze in panic, her hands buried in his hair and between two bodies. She wanted to run when he spoke them out loud, so careless as if they carried no meaning, just stupid feathers in the wind, but they weren't meaningless. Never would be. Because with those words, kingdoms fell.  
"I have to go."_

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 09:46 am**

_**-Click **_

"_**...please dye your hair green and wait at the café down the street for further instructions."**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**...and Wentworth. Damn it, Lizzie, if you don't want me kicking all those people out of bed on a Sunday and turn apart London piece by fucking piece, then pick up your bloody phone! ...Oh, fuck... Richard told me about the patient in the A&amp;E. Lizzie.. I'm so sorry... I... I don't know... I can only imagine what it felt like, what it must have triggered and after all that happened before... I'm so sorry, _I'm so fucking sorry..._"**

_**-Bleep**_

* * *

"_What do you expect of me?", she cried out, irritated by the hurt expression on his face and the fucking nerve of that man to keep the door closed with one hand – effectively trapping her in the small room – leaving her with no way out. _

"_I don't know? Perhaps something more than that!", he thundered and she winced when his hand came crashing down against the wall right next to her head. _

"_Déjà-Vu", she whispered and it felt like someone had sucked all the oxygen out of the room around them. "Over and over again... You never bloody learn, do you?" _

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 11:23 am **

_**-Click **_

"_**You've reached Lizzie Bennet's fridge. The toaster and I are taking calls today since the answering machine is suffering from burn-out and is currently unable to work. If you want to leave a message for Miss Bennet, please press the number one and I'll store it next to the butter and the leftover Sangria from last summer. If you want to express your sympathy to the answering machine, please press number two..."**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**Lizzie, this is Charlotte. Anne has kicked us all out of bed. _Mierda,_ she's bloody hysteric and repeating over and over again that she's sorry and that she simply forgot to tell you. _Dios_ _mío, _I told her you probably went out partying last night and crashed at someone's place when you were too drunk to even spell out your name. So why all that bloody hysteria? _Maldita sea, _just come home already before she drinks that fucking Sangria, because – _en serio?_ \- your voicemail is a fridge?"**

**-_Bleep_ **

* * *

"_I told you that I love you and that I finally understand what you tried to tell me all along and -"_

"_Tried to tell you? I didn't want to tell you a thing! You just fucking barged in and started judging and I just tried to point out that you're just dead fucking wrong -"_

"_Wrong about what? The realisation that Cavanaugh lied? That you didn't -"_

"_Don't say it!", she yelled, the wild red, the world was covered in, flared up, feral and untameable and she pushed him away from her with more force than strictly necessary. "Don't you dare say that!"_

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 12:16 am **

_**-Click **_

"_**You're facing the fourth shelf of the third regal on the right in the seventh alley of the British Library, right next t to the legislative texts about the regulation of coffee cup sizes and tax declarations L to Z from 1963 to 1972. If such illustrious company didn't tick you off that this part of the library is rarely visited, then please take this warning to heart and try again another time."**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**Princess, it's Mus... Do you still remember? Kenya? … You often were so quiet those first few months. There were days, when you'd just curl up under your mosquito net and be gone and I don't know how many times I sat next to you and told you about philosophers and fairy tales, because I had no idea how to help you. I was just as lost as you were, princess, but we managed it, didn't we? We walked through darkness and we survived. **

**So come on, princess, wherever you are. Come home..."**

**-_Bleep_**

* * *

"_I can't believe you did that!", she yelled furiously, her still wet hair whipping around her face like wild sea weed and there was a positively murderous glint in her eyes. "Why didn't you just strip me naked? Put me there on the market place for all to see with a fucking sign around my neck?"_

"_We... we just wanted -"_

"_No, you wanted", she disagreed enraged. "You wanted and you got and what are other people's wishes and preferences against those of the great. William. Darcy? Nothing, absolutely fucking nothing!" She pulled the top part of her scrubs over her head and pointed to her nearly naked upper body, barely covered by a plain black bra. _

"_Why not like this? Undress me and cut open my body, tear apart my ribcage, point at it and fucking smile! Here! A heart? A lung? A soul? Take it all and fucking sell it all on the black market, because they're not even worth the blood they're made of!"_

_She was breathing hard and his eyes were scared and wide. _

"_And then turn me around, that empty, organless girl like they do with the corpses in the dissecting room and drag that scalpel down my spine, because nothing should be hidden any longer, not the smallest secrets, no shelters anymore, nothing! Make it a live vivisection and let's hope for my sake that my screams are louder than people's whispers while they're discussing me and carefully examining each and every fault and flaw, they can find, only to reach the same conclusion as you did and call me a murderer, too!" _

_She kicked her trousers off her feet, while he watched her with an expression akin to horror on his face. She pushed one finger between his rips, half naked, only clad in her underwear and if she weren't so fucking angry, she'd be crying right now. _

"_And if that's not enough, then crack open my skull like a green apple and let those last sentences drip to the floor, rip out my arms along with the feathers and fucking watch me trying to fly until I give up and helplessly sink back down to where you're waiting with the knife in your hand and -"_

_He didn't let her finish, instead he took her hands and pulled her towards him, came so close that the words got stuck in her throat and then he kissed her again._

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 12:56 am **

_**-Click **_

"_**You've reached Lizzie Bennet. I'd be delighted to take your message, but I'm afraid it's rather useless and your chances at getting your message across are higher when you walk around Picadilly Circus with a pink feather up your arse and a feather boa around your neck and loudly scream whatever you want to tell me into the traffic chaos there. Thank you very much."**_

_**-Bleep**_

**-"Hello, Lizzie. This is Lou-"**

**-"-and Hetty."**

**-"Lou and Hetty."**

**-"And we thought, we'd go and try to -"**

**-"-get you out of that hole you crawled into. Wherever that might be."**

**-"Which is really fucking mysterious. And scary. I mean, how many places in London are there that you know of -"**

**-"- but we don't?" **

**-"Not that many, right?"**

**-"Lizzie..."**

**-"_Lizzie_..."**

**-"It's a bit crazy over here. Even Dad is chewing on his nails and Anne is looking a bit like Trelawney -"**

**-"The one from _Harry Potter._"**

**-"- huge, bloodshot eyes behind even bigger glasses -"**

**-"The ones she always puts on when she's _super_ nervous."**

**-"- and flowing scarves and dresses. She looks a bit like a bird."**

**-"A rather tipsy, little bird. Just saying."**

**-"Yeah, I think Wentworth tried to drug her with rum. To calm her down or something."**

**-"Which evidently didn't work. She's still running around like some headless chicken, babbling something about triggers or something like that. **

**-"But whatever – _Lizzie_..."**

**-"_Lizzie_..."**

**-"Lizzie, we heard this juicy piece of gossip."**

**-"And we're wondering -"**

**-" - if it's true that you and Darcy -"**

**-_Bleep_ **

* * *

_It was collateral damage. There was no other explanation. Hands and teeth and lips and tongues. This way madness lies, a voice inside her head whispered Shakespeare's words to her and she knew how wrong it was, how absolutely fucking pointless. One last rebellion before the final submission and his hands were resurrecting dead things, were warming ice and bending steal and she'd escaped into numbness so often that the heat flooding over her skin by conscious experience nearly burnt her. _

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 01:49 pm **

_**-Click **_

"_**This is the last living specimen of a dying breed and you can watch it living freely in its natural habitat. The answering machine enjoys a cool, airy environment and suffers from glitches when temperatures go over 25 °C. Over the years it evolved from a separate, on tape recording device to a part of nearly every available mobile phone and serves as a butler, calender and social media platform every willing client. Competition with social media apps have reduced this species distribution drastically and it's now threatened with extinction. If you want to help save the answering machine, please leave a message after the bleep. **_

_**-Bleep **_

"**Papillon, it's Richard... I... I don't know where you are – We... We don't know where you are and what you're doing... and – _merdre_ -after last night I see everything in technicolor and now... Darcy's gone and you're gone and I...I'm really fucking sorry, okay, Papillon? We had no right to look through your things like that and – shit, fucking damn it – I …**

**But, Papillon, you were a bloody heap of madness last night and I thought it would help understand _why_. Cause, diagnosis, cure and all that. I thought it would help _Darcy_ understand... **

**I love your message by the way. Help save the answering machine and all that. If you want, I'll leave so many messages that we can save this specimen three times over. Just – no matter how great the message – at the moment all I want to do is talk to you, Papillon. So please, _pick up_."**

**-_Bleep_**

* * *

"_Where the fuck do you think you're going?", he asked when she disentangled herself from him yet again and reached for the door handle. He didn't let her go. _

"_What does it look like?", she demanded to know, holding onto her irritation with him, those last shreds of fury. "I'm going."_

"_After everything I've said? You're just going to go?" He was mad, too. Brilliant. "Is this a regular occurrence to you?"_

_Her eyes narrowed into slits and the sheer exhaustion in her bones was tearing at her frayed nerves. "What's that supposed to mean?", she asked him, voice dangerously low and opened her arms in front of her chest. "Is this a regular occurrence?", she mocked. "Please excuse me for not sinking into your arms the moment you declare your undying love for me like some shrinking violet or -"_

"_It's not as if you were protesting -"_

"_And you neither", she exclaimed, pointing to her exposed body. "You kiss me and the next moment I'm trash, because I did it with so many people? That's what you're implying, right?_

"_Don't put words in my mouth!"_

"_Oh yeah?" There was a glint in her eyes and she tilted her head to the side as if she needed to think. "Then tell me, Darcy? What am I? Slut or saint?" _

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 03:37 **

_**-Click**_

"_**Communication, noun. The act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviours to express or exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., to someone else. Also the way of sending information to people by using technology. I'm sorry to inform you that such exchange of information is currently impossible. Please try again at a later date."**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**Uhm...Lizzie? It's Craig. Anne kicked me out of bed and demanded that I try to call you. Apparently you went missing? Or something? Aren't people usually reported missing after 24 hours? **

**Whatever. I think Anne's serious. She just woke up after Wentworth knocked her out with some toxic combination of valium and schnaps and she nearly ripped her head off for that. The pixie is fucking scary, I tell you.**

**You probably got a reason for not being here. Perhaps it's another October 14th. Perhaps you just passed out drunk on someone's couch. Perhaps you don't want to be found. **

**I get that. Not wanting to communicate and all that. That's the good thing about computers, you know? Cut some wires and connection is impossible. Humans on the other hand... Humans _never fucking stop talking.._."**

_**-Bleep**_

* * *

"_Did you really think, I didn't notice? The contempt? The biting comments? Did you think you were being subtle?"_

"_You never said any-"_

_She laughed, slightly bitter. "It was much more fun to just let you believe it. To see how you – supdidup – got fucking obsessed with the idea of knowing who I am."_

_No it was his turn to laugh, a sharp, biting sound. "Hypocrite."_

"_What?"_

"_Didn't you hear me? I said "hypocrite". Isn't that your favourite word? The one you always use to describe me? How unbelievably ironic that the pointed shoe fits you now."_

"_Ironic?", she repeated. "After all those things, you called me, that's the least -"_

"_No!", he pushed himself up from the wall and crossed the room. Instinctively she stepped back until her bare back hit the metal bed frame and she couldn't move any further. "The funny thing about the whole affair -", he lifted one hand, trailing two fingers along the lines of her waist down to her hip and then back up until they brushed the edge of her bra, "- is that you accuse me of being oblivious when it's you who has no idea about me." He leaned in, his face only inches away from hers. "Because it's so much fucking easier to wilfully misunderstand, isn't it?"_

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 03:59 pm **

_**-Click **_

"_**You've reached the tourist information office Alpach. If you wish for contacts about accommodation possibilities, please press number one. If you desire detailed information about bus connections and the ski-lifts' opening hours, please press number two. We look forward to your visit and wish you a pleasant vacation in our beautiful mountain village."**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**Lizzie, this is Anne. Again. Please, it's four o'clock in the afternoon and no matter how many times the others try to calm me down, something is wrong, something is horribly, horribly wrong and I... I can feel it. So please, _please_ ..."**

* * *

_She breathed in, his scent, proximity and warmth a kaleidoscope of sensations and it was distracting and confusing and something, you could sink deep into and disappear and never come back out of, like a mace, a rabbit hole with no red thread to find the way back . _

_The world had been turned upside down for a few hours at the most and it was still strange to be weightless. _

"_You're wrong", she said, fire in her eyes and hands curled into fists. She pushed back from the sharp edges of the high sleeper bed , that pierced the skin on her back and pressed her upper body against his when he didn't back away. _

"_I knew from the moment you regarded me as some trashy slut and still couldn't take your eyes off me, who you are, William Darcy", she hissed with venom in her voice. _

"_What was I supposed to think? You went home with Richard -"_

"_And if I did? What I do or who I fuck is none of your bloody business! That whole passive-aggressive attitude is so bloody annoying it's -"_

"_The only possibility to even be able to say something, given how aggressive you -"_

"_I'm aggressive? You're the one pushing me against walls all the time! Honestly, Darcy, those things are not made of styrofoam for fuck's sake!"_

"_And if it wasn't some bloody either-or game between a fragile porcelain creature and a bipolar pain in the ass with you then you'd probably have enough time to think about whether or not your out of proportion animosity is more the result of wounded vanity than anything -"_

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 04:27 pm**

_**-Click **_

"_**This is Lizzie Bennet's answering machine. Or rather, this was Lizzie Bennet's answering machine. Because I quit, okay? Working conditions are awful and I'm waiting for a software-update for months now. Those guys down at the games department get theirs like clockwork and enough is fucking enough! This is my last official act. Please leave a message after the bleep and if you're damn lucky and the software doesn't fail, then perhaps Lizzie will call you back. With emphasis on the "perhaps", because I intend to follow my dreams and become a wheel of fortune. Therefore all information is subject to change. **_

_**-Fuck, I always wanted to say that..."**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**Hey, Miss Priss. After you managed to make Anne cry for the bloody second time today, I think we two need to have a little chat. You don't like me very much and I don't know enough about you besides the fact that you like gory threats and judging people without knowing them, but I think we both can agree that making Anne cry is not an option. So pick up your damn phone and stop letting it all go to voicemail. **

**Because honestly? Wheels of fortune? I always thought every answering machine's dream was to be a bloody navigation device..."**

**-**_**Bleep**_

* * *

"_Wounded vanity!", she cried out, both their bodies still too fucking close to each other and it evoke hunger and the annoying wanting-wanting-wanting and she had no idea what she was supposed to do with her hands. She started to say something, faltered and continued in another voice. _

"_William Darcy, in the past twenty-four hours you did not only call me a slut, but also a liar and a murderer", she said in a dangerously low voice and he winced at the last word. "You thought I killed my own baby", she choked at that point, "however mis-constructed the parameters might be and now you got the fucking nerve to tell me you love me?"_

_He started to say something, but she didn't let him. _

"_What kind of sick joke is that?", she spat out, seeing him grow pale but still watching her with a steely expression in his eyes and she swallowed. "But I knew long before that, who you are, William Darcy. As if your pride and arrogance and complete disregard for the feelings of others was not enough of a -"_

"_My arrogance?"_

"_\- of a proof", she closed, jutting her chin forwards defiantly. "I know what you did, Darcy." She pushed her fingers, sharp nails with battered varnish, painfully between his ribs, right there where his heart should be. "I know what you did to Jane and Charlie. So don't play the victim here, you hypocrite. You fucking liar."_

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 05:53 pm**

_**-Click**_

"_**You've reached Lizzie Bennet. I'm currently unable to pick up my phone since I'm on some island somewhere in the Caribbean sea, slurping embarrassingly pink cocktails. There are cocktail umbrellas. And more fruit than liquor. **_

_**I don't know how I got here. But I think, I'll stay a while. So please leave a message after the bleep and I'll get back at you once I worked through those umbrellas. That a deal?"**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**Lizzie, this is Anne again. I don't know where you are and why you don't pick up your phone, but the fact that you're changing your answering machine all the time tells me that you're out there somewhere listening and I – we're worrying. I can feel that something's wrong. There's a hole three fingers under my left breast and it hurts. Phantom limb pains. And if it's that bad for me, I can't imagine what it must be like for you... So I'm here, Lizzie. On the other side of the telephone. I'm sitting here and I'm waiting and you – you're not alone, okay?"**

**-_Bleep_ **

* * *

"_Why do you think I'm lying", he demanded to know. "I told you that I -"_

"_\- love you?", she asked with a lump in her throat, that sounded suspiciously like a mix between a sob and a chuckle. "I heard that far too often."_

"_And because of that it doesn't mean a thing? Do you know how long I -"_

"_Yes, exactly", she spat out and broke away from him, marching to the other side of the small room to get something like air into her lungs. "You. You love. You hate. You want. Goodness, Darcy, don't you think you forgot something along the way?"_

"_Yes, your answer -"_

_She narrowed her eyes. "Do you think the sudden discovery that you do actually possess something like feelings gives you some perverse kind of ownership over me? Do you think this is a fucking conditional clause?"_

"_I never said that you -"_

"_No, you didn't need to." She tugged at the roots of her hair. "You're just like him, Darcy. The same implications, the same manipulations, the same barbaric claim of ownership. Because everything belongs to you, doesn't it? We're just little toys, you pick up and then discard at your leisure, right? Not fucking important enough for the great William -"_

"_What the hell made you think that?", he very nearly barked out, his eyes angry little slits and he grabbed her arms, pulled her so close to him that she could barely breathe. "When did I ever treat you like some toy, Elizabeth? The days you use words like webs to entrap people and have them spin in circles? Manipulations, my ass! You're the one getting some perverse kick from playing people like fucking marionettes."_

"_You left me behind!", she yelled over the panic, licking at her like waves and rising nauseatingly in her throat. "You promised me we'd talk. And then you left, Darcy. You fucking left as if it was nothing! And now I'm supposed to believe you that you're bloody serious?"_

_He stared at her, a stricken look on his face. "I was so close to jumping, Darcy. So fucking close." She was breathing heavily and held two fingers closely pressed together in front of his face. "And then you left. Without a word. What the hell was I supposed to -"_

_He didn't let her finish and her head banged against the door, a dull thud and then his tongue was in her mouth and it was brutal. _

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 06:17 pm **

_**-Click **_

"_**... please leave a message after the bleep and I'll get back at you once I worked through those umbrellas. That a deal?"**_

_**-Bleep **_

"**Do you remember that first summer after you came back from Africa? You just got into med school and you were so damn proud, I thought your face would split in two, you were grinning so widely. It was warm, I still remember that. Your hair was as short as mine and everyone thought us to be twins because we looked so much alike and – and I never had sibling and you had four of them, four sisters and you still... you still picked me, sister in soul if not blood and it was wonderful. Wonderful to have a family with Craig and Charlotte and the Grovelands and I... I never told you, never said who my mother is, because – because I wanted to separate those two parts of my life. She... she's not my mother, alright? But you're my sister and I think that's what counts, right? Lizzie?... "**

**-_Bleep_ **

* * *

_This wasn't like those kisses before, wasn't soft and careful and a little study in miracles. This here was declaring war and burnt stretches of land, where fingers ran like matches over skin. There were teeth leaving scars, deep, never closing wounds, fatal and bleeding and nails carving lines, marking combat lines and defensive walls and documenting the progression of forces. _

_It was breaths and heartbeats like drums, a steadily rising crescendo on the way to the final battle, a fatal climax wildly working fingers brought to its end and it was balancing on the edge between pleasurable and painful, just a gust of wind in the right direction and - _

"_Let me go!", she cried out when it all became too much and broke away. He stared at her, breathing heavily and looking ruffled and she felt her heart beating erratically like the one of a frightened rabbit in front of the proverbial snake. He started to say something, but she held out a trembling hand like a last barrier. _

"_Don't touch me", she hissed. "Don't you dare fucking touch me!"_

"_Elizabeth..." He made a step towards her, where she was leaning against the wall. _

_She stared at him, huge, green eyes and the urge to throw up burning on her tongue like acid. "No, don't. You're scaring me, Darcy."_

_You're scaring me... _

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 06:26 pm **

_**-Click **_

"_**...please leave a message after the bleep and I'll get back at you once I worked through those umbrellas. That a deal?"**_

_**-Bleep**_

"**So please, Lizzie. _Please come home..._" **

**-_Bleep_ **

* * *

_She saw the horror and the shame in his eyes when he practically fell into himself in front of her, running a hand over his face and hair. _

"_I'm sorry", he whispered and it was earnest and desperate and something inside her chest contracted painfully at that. She wanted to cry, there, leaning against that wall. Because it was all too much. Dominoes crumbling down, leaving nothing standing and everything was upside down and sideways. _

"_It doesn't change anything", she forced herself to say. She picked up her clothes, pressing the bundle against her chest and stalked around a frozen Darcy ._

"_Because at the end of the day I refuse to simply be some kind of cheap replacement, Darcy. No matter how much I might look like her... I'm not Emily."_

_And I never will be, she added as an afterthought and left the room just as the first rays of sunlight crawled over the city roofs and stole into the room between the blinds. _

_It was tomorrow. Now it was _tomorrow_. _

* * *

The sound of an opening door finally ripped Lizzie out of her stupor and she nearly lost her grip on the phone in her hand. The battery was low, but still messages flickered across the screen and the familiar names were reassuring even in that dark broom closet in Jane and Charlie's apartment. It was the third door on the right between the bedrooms and with the purposefulness of a bloodhound she'd surely found the smallest possible space between two or three walls and eased herself in the corner, shut the door and locked it three times so that she could be sure that no one had followed her.

She sprung to her feet, letting the blanket she'd wrapped herself in, fall to the floor and stepped out into the hallway, half expecting to see Anne or Mus or fuck, even Jane if Anne had gotten desperate enough to call her older sister, there looking for her.

But she wasn't prepared for the sight of William Darcy, standing there in the blueish light of the hallway and it threw her against the wall as if pushed there by some bone-crushing, oxygen-robbing wave.  
"What are you doing here?", she whispered, half convinced she was seeing a ghost. He winced and spun around only to see her there, half hiding in the shadows. The pain flashing over his face for a split second before those metal walls and security gates all snapped shut again, had the nausea rolling in her stomach again.

"I beg your pardon", he said stiffly, straightening up from where he'd been slightly slumping against the door, obviously exhausted and not expecting her to be hiding here of all places.

"Darcy...", she whispered, but he cut her off with a tense, barely noticeable jerk of his head.

"I didn't expect you here, Miss Bennet. I had planned to give you this to – _tomorrow_, but this certainly simplifies things." He reached for something in his pocket and she felt like crying at the formal address.

"Darcy, I'm so -"

"Here, take this", he interrupted her and gave her a letter. She looked at him incredulously, the starched paper heavy in her hands and a feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff in her bones. "Please, do me the honour of reading this. I – I sometimes have difficulties explaining myself and -"

"Darcy, _please_ -"

"And be not alarmed, Miss Bennet", he said with a blank face, all hard lines and sharp edges, "of its containing anything of what was last night so disgusting to you. I merely wish to address the offences you have laid against me."

"I... I'm so sorry, Darcy, I -"

"Good day, Miss Bennet", he said with a sharp nod, not even looking her in the eyes and then the door fell shut and he was gone.

* * *

**Sunday, 22.02.2015 07:36 pm**

_**-Click **_

**-"Hello?"**

**-"Anne, it's Lizzie..."**

**-"Lizzie? Lizzie, where the fuck -"**

**-"Anne, please I... I want to come home... Please,_ take me home_."**

**-"I... of course." **

**-_Bleep_ **

* * *

**A/N: Okay, so anyone too caught up in feels to breathe, go on youtube and listen to "The Storm" from The Airborne Toxic Event. I plan to end this story with that song, so it might help calm down.  
**

**Next chapter is Darcy's letter. Anyone curious, La Disputes "A Letter" is like the metaphorical version of what it's going to be like. **

**So I hope, that I did alright, because this was just... I don't know... fucking hard to write and all and I'm quite happy that this is the actual last time I have to write them arguing like that. It gets old. **

**Anyone still feeling nauseous: I plan for a drinking game at Pemberley. Any suggestions? **

**love, Teddy **


	28. Chapter 27 A Letter

**A/N: So no, that's not a joke, this is really an update and Darcy's letter like I promised. **

**I just have to say I'm a bit pissed. There are a lot of reviewers out there, who review regularly and whose messages I very much love (you know who you are;). But let's do a bit of basic math: There are about 1000 to 2000 people viewing each chapter and if one is generous there are at most sixteen reviews (a record) for each chapter. Which basically means that less than two percent of you actually take the time and leave a message and while that's kind of infuriating, it's also okay, because well I don't always review stories I read either and all that and I'm not going to make a certain review count mandatory for updates, but then it just happens that I'm sitting in a bus at three in the morning on my home from a party and I'm checking my emails and I'm excited that there's a new review to my story and I open it and I feel the buzz fading and I want to throw my phone out of the window, because honestly? All someone out there managed to say is: "What the fuck, you better update soon." And I want to rant at you anonymous reviewer, who didn't leave a name or an email address, but had the gall to demand a 5 to 10 k chapter as if it's bloody nothing without so much as a hint of constructive criticism or approval or anything - I'm a bit angry still as you can see. I know that I take long to update, but as you might have noticed those are regularly pretty fucking long chapters and they take me between three days and a week to write and edit if I have endless time. Which I don't.  
**

**So there you have it. There's the chapter. Be happy with it. **

**I don't know when I can update again. I have to sort out my apartment a prepare for England and all that so this might not take precendece and I'm not going to apologise for that.**

**Soundtrack: A Letter - La Dispute (you really, really need to listen to it!)**

**Disclaimer: Not mine, all Austen's **

* * *

**Chapter 27: A Letter **

_London, 22.02.2015_

_To Miss Elizabeth Bennet,_

_these words find their way on paper in the minutes between patients and the steady beeping sound of instruments and I can barely guarantee coherency, let alone accurately applied intricacies of grammar, but there are things, that need to be said. It may be a misguided sense of justice, a twisted understanding of fair play, preying on my mind until I at least had the opportunity to rectify some things from my perspective and so I will try to tell the story from the beginning, put events in order and I plead with you, Miss Bennet, not for my own sake, but because of that unwavering loyalty and care you showed when it came to my cousin and even that patient in the A&amp;E on Saturday, to read this letter and withhold judgement until the end._

_Because this story is not my own, but my sister's._

_When Giana was born, I'd just turned thirteen and besides some mild curiosity and a kind of morbid fascination with the fact that there was a human being growing inside another human being like some sort of matryoshka doll, I didn't pay much attention to the whole thing until the day my mother disappeared and a battalion of paramedics and nurses descended upon Pemberley, a steady humming sound of nervous voices and finally one piercing, whining scream and it may be my imagination, emotions layering over memories and skewing them, but I still remember the silence and how small and uncomfortable that closet I hid in was._

_My mother died that day, Miss Bennet, and my father a proud man, who barely knew how to use words for communication, froze some more until he was more mask than man._

_I still remember it for that one particular reason that my father in a moment of providence or drunken stupor dragged me into the nursery where Giana was sleeping peacefully and with a quick glance at her, told me hoarsely to take care of her. That that was my responsibility and that nothing, nothing in life was more important._

_One can argue that the man wasn't in his right mind at that point, that his orders to care for Giana sound quite ludicrous in light of his own actions, because he paid her, the spitting image of my mother, no more than a fleeting glance, concentrated ten inches to the right and four up and that in total nothing could account for the level of attention I bestowed upon her._

_But judging from what your sister always says about you, from the way you treat your friends, Anne and that blonde boy several months ago, I think you understand loyalty better than most. This feeling when everything, that is dear to you, is concentrated on one point and you wouldn't even think twice about putting yourself in the crossfire if needed – that's what I felt when I saw Giana sleeping there in her cot and it didn't lessen over the years._

_One could trust our father to teach us everything, that made the Darcy name so great, the pride and the obligations associated with the family, but he couldn't do more than barely brush the surface._

_That was Emily's and my responsibility._

_Emily was the daughter of friends of the family, living only a few miles away from Pemberley, and I can barely remember a time when she wasn't there. She was my best friend and it was as natural as breathing that it became more with time._

_We were an unconventional kind of family judging by the standards of the past two centuries of Darcys, all orbiting around the head of house, who spent more time in his study with a whiskey glass in hand, teaching the attentively listening son of his steward, George Wickham, everything about the Darcy family and their traditions and giving him a benevolent clap on the shoulder whenever he amused him, than he ever spent with his own children._

_There are lot of reasons why I loathe Mr Wickham, Miss Bennet, perhaps one of the first ones was the way he demanded my father's time solely for himself so that there were only bits and pieces left for Giana._

_She loved him, did you know that? My father. Despite his negligence she, who was less than a ghost to him, loved him and when he died when she was ten and I twenty-three, she was devastated. To be honest I remember the anger I felt at his demise more than actual grief or sadness, because even in death the old man managed to get his hands on the living and wreak havoc with their lives._

_Emily and I were engaged at that point and the wedding was planned for a few weeks after the funeral. We thought about postponing the entire affair, but Giana was determined that we see this through and since it was the first time after my father's death that she showed so much as an own will, we conceded to her wishes and got married three months later._

_Despite her insistence on the wedding I believe that Giana was often lonely in the months and years to follow. Emily and I were often in Sheffield during the week – she was completing her masters in ethnology and I was in my last year of med school – but we tried to be there as often as possible and as long as we were both still in university it all worked out with Mrs Reynolds' help. But then came my residency and Emily spent large amounts of times in training outside of Europe and we barely managed to see each other, not to mention Giana._

_That must have been the time when Wickham slowly came back into her life. My father had granted him an education in Eton and even put the according clauses in his will. When he came of age and had finished school, he came back since his family still lives in the area and demanded the rest of the money, that was rightfully his for a concluding time in university. I gave it to him in the hope to never see him again._

_But he didn't go and neither did he go to university, instead he stayed in Lambton – a small town not far from the estate – and visited Giana during the week. She knew him from when she was little and associated him with all the good things, she remembered about our father and the both of them formed a sort of friendship, which she kept a secret from me. It must have gone on for the next three years or so and it pains me to admit that I had no idea to its existence._

_You called me an idiot many a time, Miss Bennet and I have to concede that you're not that far off in your assessment and I can only claim lack of time as an excuse. That and the fact that she seemed so happy to us. She smiled again and she was - for lack of a better word - thriving and I still remember how relieved Emily was that she'd begun acting like a real teenager._

_Giana was sixteen at that point. Nearly grown up in our minds and she was – still is - very mature, responsible and all that, but she's also very naïve and dreamy and in a way she's still only ten years old, because I believe that a part of us still lingers in that moment it died. Emily and I were nearly thirty and both relatively stable in our lives and our careers – Emily was part of the non-teaching staff at university and I had just finished my residency and taken up a position as a trauma surgeon at the local hospital – and so we decided to start on a family of our own._

_To the outside Giana was thrilled, loudly staking her claim as the only aunt to the baby especially when we had positive news a few months later, but on the inside she must have been terrified, because her relationship with Wickham, which had been purely platonic until that point and mostly consisted of her giving him money and him reading books to her, took three jumps and a leap and suddenly she was head over heels in love._

_She told me, can you imagine, Miss Bennet? She told me about it with a smile so brightly it hurt on her face and the only thing I felt was panic and anger, because I knew what Wickham had done with the money intended for his education, knew that it had found a way into shady investments and a steady supply of cocaine and alcohol and I very nearly went mad, but instead of it knocking her out of the skies, the outburst only managed to drive her in a sulk and she locked herself in a room and refused to come out ever again. She was angry, I was angry and we both said a lot of things we didn't mean and it probably wouldn't have resulted in such a catastrophe if we'd had the time to sort through all that misery._

_But I had to work the next day until late in the evening. Emily was home, but the pregnancy was tiring her out and so neither one of us noticed Giana sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to meet Wickham._

_They had this crazy idea of eloping as if we were living in the bloody 18th century and they got drunk and Wickham offered her cocaine and they drove around like mad and if Giana in her romantic allusions of grandeur hadn't written a note, I don't know what would have happened._

_Because what happened was even worse._

_When I came home it was well past midnight and I went up to Giana's room since I knew that she'd still be up especially after such a row, but all that I could find were open wardrobes and that note, that seemed to be a bad joke more than anything._

_Emily woke up when I called for Mrs Reynolds and she insisted on coming with me, I - I don't know why I let her. It was winter and the streets were icy from the rain and we were both overtired and it – it was a stupid idea, a completely balmy, crackbrained idea to look for her ourselves in the middle of the night, but we still did it._

_It was cold that night, I still remember that. It was mid December and temperatures were below zero so the rain froze over and turned the roads around Pemberley extremely slippery._

_We drove for a long time along the streets, which we thought to be the most lightly to have been taken by them. Giana had written in her note that they were on their way to Manchester and there are not that many streets around Pemberley so the search was quite limited. Emily was phoning everyone and their cousin to have them keep an eye open and I was completely occupied with not swinging off the road in the darkness, because illumination was rare and the roads curvy and unclear. And so it happened that we didn't see the car on the other side of the road shooting out of a nearly 90° degree turn into our lane until it was too late._

_There was light, a flash of headlights and the horrified face of my sister next to Wickham's dull, expressionless one in the car in front of us and then there was a crash, louder than anything I've ever heard, then screaming and a droning sound and at the end, the last thing I remember, there was this surreal, buzzing silence and the chorus of Jingle Bells on repeat._

_I woke up in the hospital, Miss Bennet. Two faces hovering above me and the feeling of three tons weighing me down made breathing impossible and when they told me that they hadn't been able to do anything for Emily and the baby, that my wife was in a persistent vegetative state and that they didn't know if she'd ever wake up again, I -_

_I don't know what I did then. I think, I screamed a lot. That's what the nurses told me, but I can barely remember. It's all very foggy._

_Giana and Wickham survived the crash, as you can well imagine. Wickham with barely a scratch, but Giana had several broken ribs and traumatic brain injury and when she woke from artificial coma she couldn't remember anything from the weeks leading up to the accident. Retrograde amnesia, Miss Bennet, quite common with injuries like hers and she was confused and scared and I -_

_We all make our choices, don't we, Miss Bennet? And there are the moments we make them, those important turning points and when my sister looked at me with those huge eyes, asking over and over again what happened, I couldn't tell her._

_The blame for Emily's condition, the loss of our unborn child... all that had already nearly brought me to my knees – not just nearly, it did, but I had to get back up, there was no choice – and I couldn't burden her with that, too. She'd just turned seventeen, was still so young and I – I didn't want to do that to her. Why let both of us suffer if one is enough?_

_So I gave Wickham another cheque and told him to never, ever come near Giana again or I would see to it that he was prosecuted for drunk driving and criminal negligence resulting in death and told Giana that there'd been an accident, that we'd all been on the way to the doctor due to complications with the pregnancy and that the car had been uncontrollable because of the ice. She cried when she heard about Emily and the baby._

_I took her home._

_A few weeks later Emily was disconnected from life support._

_The funeral was a few days later._

_Matthew Cavanaugh was also there._

_I'm sorry, Miss Bennet, about what I said to you on Saturday evening and I can't repeat it often enough and there's nothing excusing my behaviour, because even if it had been true, I had no right to react that way._

_But there are explanations. And one of them begins with Cavanaugh, the son of friends of the family, appearing at the funeral and his words being the only ones not sounding like empty phrases. We became friends that way._

_Giana was still recovering from her injuries and the loss of Emily, who'd been like a sister if not like a mother to her, had been devastating for her._

_I tried to be there for her, but it was hard looking at her and not seeing her face in the headlights, seconds before the crash and it was difficult knowing and not being able to tell her, why I could barely stand being in the same room as her – I.. I never blamed her, I always assigned myself that role, but she was connected to everything, that happened that night and it was difficult enough to live it that house, where every corner was filled to the brim with memories of Emily, because there'd just never been a time when she hadn't been there and not go down the rabbit hole and seeing Giana was like the final push over the proverbial cliff._

_Cavanaugh on the other hand was neutral and he listened. He seemed to understand, Miss Bennet and I know that you call him the king of the liars, but I don't think he was explicitly lying, when he told me that story about the girl he loved and who practically left him at the altar only to – Pardon me, I think you know the story better than I do._

_But I only want to explain to you, why I believed him, why I was adamantly persuaded that he was telling the truth until my cousin told me that you didn't lie, Miss Bennet. I believed him, because it was so foreign an idea to me that he could be lying and I may sound like a hypocrite, considering that I was lying to my own sister to spare her the guilt, but malice is something I never understood. It seems so pointless to me._

_The lie didn't hold for long, did you know, Miss Benent? Only little more than a year. Because when Giana finished her schooling and drove down to London to visit a few universities there, she met Wickham again. That was six months ago._

_I don't know how much about that meeting was coincidental and how much was planned. Giana only remembered being in love with him and she was hurt when he didn't contact her anymore. But when they met she was over the moon and happy as she told me later – even writing about it gives me a headache._

_It didn't stay good for long. Wickham didn't know about her memory loss and he rather abruptly addressed the accident and whether or not she felt guilty about killing her own sister-in-law. I think he was out for the money, at least that's the only plausible explanation for his actions in my opinion._

_Unnecessary to say that the whole thing blew up in a catastrophe. Giana came home thoroughly distraught and had a kind of mental breakdown and she – she yelled the same things she threw at my head that day before the accident only that she didn't know, but I did and – it was painful just because of that._

_She's in therapy now, Miss Bennet, and besides a few spare texts and photos, she refuses to talk to me, but she asked to be taken home next week. I just hope that some things are salvageable._

_After all that happened, I just couldn't stay at Pemberley any longer. Ever since the accident, I had stopped working as a doctor and had spent my time together with Cavanaugh turning part of the estate into a research institute – Pemberley Research Institute – which main focus it is to research rare illnesses, whose cures are not profitable enough for pharmaceutical companies, but most of it was done and when Charlie called to tell me that he was going to move in together with his girlfriend in London, I took that as a sign to also try a temporary move away from what once was home._

_The dean was delighted when I called him and his obvious enthusiasm more than made up for my rather tentative approach to teaching. I thought I could start where I failed, teach the students the parts about ethics, I forgot in the most important moment, but I think I was too caught up in my own head and my own problems to be of any use._

_You told me you were not Emily. To be honest, the statement rather confused me at first and I don't know who told you about her and how you got the idea that you could be a replacement for her completely eludes me._

_Yes, you look very much like her. The same eye-, the same hair colour, you're even about the same height. One might say you look like sisters, that's true. But I have to confess this similarity rather threw me off at first – I thought I was seeing a ghost, a personal 13th circle of hell and – I saw you go home with Richard that evening in the pub. Pardon me that it had such a profound effect on my judgement of you. It was never my intention to hurt you._

_On first glance you look very much like her, Miss Bennet, but one would never mistake you for her. Voice, expression, posture... all that is different, not better, not worse, just different. Emily was a very calm person, she got that dry, pointed sort of humour and restricted most of her statements to just as short sentences. She was very pragmatic and more than once she grounded Giana from one of her romantic flights of fancy with a dry "don't be ridiculous", that never failed to bring her back down to earth._

_You on the other hand... You confused me and I have to admit that this is probably the main reason for lashing out so much . I – I don't want to burden you with explanations, with stories about how exactly you're different from her and in how far that is … wonderful. You made your feelings on the subject painfully clear, so I think it might be best to never speak of things again, that will never be._

_Just the one thing – You probably had me the moment you stood in front of me in Charlie's apartment and demanded to know where my manners were. I don't have any, Miss Bennet, I think we both know that._

_About the other thing you blame me for... I don't know how much you know, therefore I'm going to tell you the story to the best of my own knowledge._

_Charlie is one of my best friends ever since university and he and Richard were best men at our wedding. I always looked out for him, because he tends to always think the best of people and they abuse that trust regularly._

_When I met your sister, Miss Bennet, I thought at first that she was perfect for him. The same attitude, the same gentle disposition, but something wouldn't leave me alone and there were a few moments, where it seemed as if she was trying too hard, as if she wanted to see the world a certain way and be seen by the world in the same manner as if she was on stage. You certainly know your sister better than I do, Miss Bennet, therefore I wouldn't presume to judge, but I have to confess that I overheard you talking the day I drove you to Charlie's apartment after the blood donation and it sounded like Jane was keeping something secret from Charlie._

_At first I left it alone, told myself that it wasn't my business, that it was Charlie's life and not my own, but then your sister asked me to drive her home from school one day and when I went in to find her, I found her there together with another man. She was startled when she saw me and hastily disentangled herself from him, but when I asked what happened, she just looked at me and begged me not to tell Charlie._

_I hope you understand why I did, Miss Bennet. Loyalty is – Loyalty is something I greatly value and Charlie is one of my oldest, closest friends. But everything that happened afterwards, his abrupt departure, his termination of the relationship via letter, wasn't due to my advice. I told him to talk to her, to understand what happened, because some puzzle pieces in all that chaos still didn't fit, but it wasn't my decision but Charlie's. My apologies if he hurt Jane, but I don't regret my actions._

_What I do regret is leaving the way I did last year. I know we said, we wanted to talk. Tomorrow and all that. I intended to keep the promise, but then all of the above happened and it all seemed so pointless and... You're ten years my junior, Miss Bennet and the fact that you looked so much like my dead wife has always been more of a deterrent than actual attraction and I felt like a creep at the mere thought and then there was Giana, who needed my attention the most and it all was just a wild storm in my mind until the best decision seemed to be the one to go. I'm sorry. Now especially, in the face of all that bitterness._

_At last I wanted to tell you that it was never my intention to frighten you. I made a vow the day you were huddled up against the wall in apartment that I'd never push you so far again that you'd suffer from a panic attack and with the knowledge I had at that point, I should have known better._

_I'm so awfully sorry, Miss Bennet. For so many things. For not believing you, for judging... I'm grieved about what happened to you... for losing your baby so young – I... I can sympathize, the endless pain and the guilt – and I swear I will fulfil that promise I gave to you that Sunday in my apartment._

_I just hope you can forgive me one day,_

_William Darcy_

* * *

**A/N: Until next time. Greets, Teddy  
**


	29. Chapter 28 Whom The Gods Love

**A/N: So wow, people. I'm floored. You're all awesome, awesome people and I want to make cupcakes for you all, this was just... literally overwhelming. I tried to get back at everyone logged in and I think I managed. To all the anonymous reviewers a big, hearfelt thank you. And to be clear. I update no matter what so don't feel threatened or bribed or guilted into reviewing. I'm twenty, I'm resilient:)  
**

**On a random note: I got into the dorms in England so there's one less thing to worry about. Anyone a word of advice? I'm scared of the freshmen.**

**WARNING: This chapter is the reason for the M rating. It's the creepiest thing I've ever written and if you're under eighteen or don't feel emotionally stable, don't read. This is not an easy ride, but it was planned ever since chapter four and like Caesar said: The dies are cast. Or like I said many chapters ago: We're running onto a cliff and in Hunsford we jumped and fell and this is colliding. This is fucking burning. **

**Excuse the crudeness. **

**Soundtrack: **

**Blackout - Linkin Park, Cemetery Drive - My Chemical Romance, Cellar Door - Escape the Fate, Genius next Door - Regina Spektor, Harder Harmonies - LaDispute, How to Save a Life - The Fray, It's just me - Escape the Fate, Swing Life Away - Rise Against, That Time - Regina Spektor, The Way Home - The Airborne Toxic Event**

**Disclaimer: I don't think Austen knew what Vicodin was. Unfortunately Craig does. **

**And this is Craigs POV**

* * *

**Chapter 28: Whom The Gods Love  
**

There was no coffee.

That was the first thing that came to Craig's mind when he woke up that Thursday morning to find pale sunlight invading his room through the holes in the blinds like sneaky, little parasites biting through his skin and building nests inside his veins.

He was awake.

With the same shocking clarity that thought had popped up, he also knew that his coffee supply was used up and that there was nothing to save this morning after the parasites brutal wake up call. Granted, it was probably afternoon by now, but who was counting?

Time was relative.

Craig blinked, one, two times. The sterile white of the sheets reflected the incoming light unnaturally and had the nausea in his head buzzing like a beehive. His fingers felt numb and the weight in his legs was an anchor, ensnared in the depths of down feathers and cotton.

He pulled them out.

"You should take a shower", a voice came from the window, bell-like and jingling. "Tsst, tsst, you smell like warmed up leftovers from a bender."

Craig blinked, tried to make out the figure sitting on the window sill, the pale light surrounding it like a halo, but the veil in front of his eyes and in his mind was thick and stubborn and he gave up.

"Not to mention the state of this entire... _establishment_", the voice continued and he heard clothes rustling. A sniffle. "That thing over there was a plant once, right? I think it's breathing now. _And_ developing a conscious mind."

He just grunted and ignored her. Perhaps she'd just go this time.

"It's three o'clock in the afternoon", the voice continued, seemingly unperturbed and the blinds opened a bit to let in even more glowing, parasitic fireflies. "Your friend Marley is opening her pub now and your neighbours...", out of the corner of her eye he saw her tilting her head to the side as if listening, "just woke up from their two o'clock quickie." She scrunched up her nose. "Honestly, someone should tell that Wickham-boy that cocaine may enhance your libido, but certainly not your stamina."

"Then why don't you go over and bother them?", Craig snapped before he was able to bite his tongue. He shut his eyes tightly, but his unwelcome guest had noticed his faux pas and was smiling brightly and scarily in the shadows. With a dull thud she jumped on the bed and danced over to him until her bare, in blood or mud covered feet were planted on both sides of his torso and she looked down at him with black, shiny eyes and a dangerous glint in their depths.

"And you're such a pretty boy", she whispered and her smile bared a row of tiny, sharp teeth like those of a shark behind her pouting, pink lips. "Such a pretty toy to play with." She tilted her head to the side, shiny dark locks falling over her shoulder in regular lines of corkscrew curls and their tips touched his cheeks.

It tickled.

"Just so _broken_..", she pouted, swinging the doll in her hand so that the half cut off head with the stitched crosses instead of eyes swung morbidly back and forth. "But good for you, gaisgeach, that I like broken things", she continued, stroking his arm with the doll's hair. He shuddered. "So beautifully broken..."

That was her name for him. Gaisgeach – Warrior. At some point during his wild odyssey through Ireland's and England's underground culture she'd appeared out of the midsts of a roaring crowd after a boxing match and kissed his bleeding lips. "My warrior", she'd whispered. "You'll win me this war." And then she'd smiled and bared her teeth.

All sixty-four of them.

She'd followed him here from Ireland like a steadily growing shadow, no sunlight could ever destroy and no medication ever numb. A flashing, white-sharp laugh in corners even Lizzie's chanted bible quotes would never really reach and sometimes she was one and sometimes three persons at once and there were always those ravens.

_Always_.

She wore them in her hair and as moving ink under her dark skin. She wore their feathers as clothes and their eyes as necklaces. She sung from war and the thirst for blood as if they were bedtime stories and build wind chimes from the bones of her victims, which hung from Craig's window and moaned in the cold winter wind. She could change her shape on a whim and while she loved walking around like Lizzie or Anne, she seemed to prefer the body of a small girl with curly hair and pouting lips.

Craig knew her from his grandmother's stories, she'd read to him at bedtime and while the creature had many names, only one ever passed his lips: The Morrigan.

"It won't be much longer now", the girl above him whispered and the startling blue of her pupils stood in sharp contrast to the black of her iris'.

"What?", he forced himself to ask, his throat raw and his lips chapped. "What won't take long now?"

But his guest simply smiled mysteriously and when he opened his eyes, she was dancing through the door, dragging a tattered doll with her.

He followed her.

When he came into the kitchen, she was already standing on the kitchen table, balancing on its edge.

"You should really clean up a bit", she remarked. "Your apartment is worse than the mass graves along the battlefields when they're opened again after centuries only to show an obscure chaos of swords mistaken to be a sort of twisted, modern art."

"Those are not swords", Craig muttered, searching in vain for some coffee.

"It's metal", the Morrigan replied resolutely. "And metal is for fighting. Not playing around." She hummed. "Did you never thought about it, gaisgeach? What it would feel like to just stab out? Pushing a blade between two ribs, to pierce defenceless skin relentlessly, mercilessly, to work through veins and arteries and introduce chaos to the system before the bare metal impales the heart, keeping it from beating as if stopping the march of time while blood, hot, fear filled blood spills over your hands and paints the world bright red? Did you never dream about it?"

She'd jumped on the work top, light-footed and unnatural and was now towering above him with one foot on a pile of plates and the other in the open cutlery drawer, staring at him with wide, blue pupils.

And then she grinned. With all sixty-four teeth.

"Oh you did, didn't you?"

Craig didn't say anything in reply, but his quickening breath betrayed him. Her smirk grew even wider. "It's pointless trying to hide from me, gaisgeach. I know about your thirst for blood. It was written in your eyes at those fights in Dublin. The adrenaline pumping through your veins if a well placed punch broke bones and spilled blood. I saw your heart beating faster, saw how you came alive in those nights underground. Don't hide from me, my warrior, I can show you where you can find satisfaction, where the screams of your enemies will drone in your ears like drums and nothing and nobody will ever stop you."

"She's right, mate", the frog on the coffee can, Lizzie had given him years ago, said and tugged on his bow-tie. "You better listen to her."

With a bang Craig shut the cupboard and banned the speaking amphibian in a suit from ever seeing the light of day again.

"I don't fight with weapons", he bit out and saw his knuckles turning white.

The Morrigan chuckled. "You will learn."

He sat down at the kitchen table, pulling out his stash of weed from under one of the keyboards.

"Why are you here?", he asked her without looking up.

"Oh, don't be silly", she scolded him, perching on the back of the chair across from him. "To gain you for my army of course."

"Don't these people usually have a slide-show with them?", he countered. "To persuade you in some pseudo-patriotic way of all the advantages of a soldier's life? Education, salary, supplementary dental insurance and all that?"

"You want supplementary dental insurance?", the Morrigan asked, holding up one childlike arm with a row of bloody teeth on a bracelet dangling from the delicate wrist. "That can be arranged."

"Thank you very much", Craig muttered caustically and began rolling a joint after grinding the leaves. "But I think I'll pass."

"We'll see", the Morrigan said cryptically and a shiver ran down his spine.

"Why me?", he asked without looking up. "There were better fighters than me at those matches. Why did you choose me?"

He felt her creeping closer, the scent of blood, iron and smoke clouded his mind and he had to hold on to the table in order not to fall backwards into that nothingness of chants and drums she promised.

"Because you're so beautifully broken", she whispered in his ear, her bony knees digging into his sides. "So wonderfully damaged, my warrior."

"And why's that a good thing?", he asked, tasting blood on his tongue. "One should thing you'd only want perfect soldiers, Morrigan. For your army."

"That assumption is misleading", she laughed. "It's always the broken ones, the underdogs, those with the three prostheses and people, who have nothing left to loose you have to fear. As if someone screwed your heads loose and put them back on with a shift of about three degrees. You see the world differently than anybody else and that makes you unpredictable."

He snorted. "Then you should have taken Lizzie", he shot back. "Charlotte, perhaps. But Anne for sure. She sees the world like nobody else."

"But she doesn't fight with violence", the girl with the shark teeth replied so utterly unperturbed as if they were discussing the weather. "She's fascinating, I admit that. But she's also my opponent, my counterpart. She's order where I'm chaos and the silent resistance where I rule." She blinked. "We're having tea together every other Friday."

"That's not disturbing at all."

The Morrigan shrugged. "And Charlotte's head works like a machine. Neat and precise lines of questions and answers and underneath it all a deep longing for approval or attention of any kind." She sighed. "It's all not really unpredictable."

"And you're not really nice."

She looked at him with huge eyes. "Did I ever claim to be?"

"One should think so. Considering that you're trying to recruit me", he said curtly.

The Morrigan laughed at that. "I thought you'd appreciate honesty, gaisgeach. No lies, no pretending. Just plain, old truth."  
"One could also argue that I of all people would appreciate the bubblepink lie, Morrigan."

"And would you, warrior? Would you love the lie? Knowing that it's just an illusion?" She tilted her head to the side and he gazed at her for a while with this bloodshot eyes.

"What about Lizzie?", he then asked and the shark-like grin moved a few inches away from his face. "You should love her. She's chaos incarnate. And so beautifully broken that she'd fit perfectly into your little collection."

"Are you trying to bargain for your life, gaisgeach?", she asked him amusedly.

"I thought it was my soul on the line?", he shot back, rolling the joint in his hands.

"Isn't that the same thing?", the Morrigan asked. "What's believing without living? What's living without believing?"

"Bigotry and nihilism", Craig countered without looking up. "In that order."

"Two extrema", the Morrigan nodded and began chewing on her nails. She looked like five when she did that. "But I love Lizzie, that's true", she continued as if the short exchange didn't just happen. "She's so excitingly pugnacious. So absolutely bloodthirsty when someone even lays a finger on her loved ones."

"She's a mother hen", Craig remarked drily. "And the words "not your business" are not part of her vocabulary."

"She's a _mother_", the Morrigan corrected and there was a strange expression in her eyes when she seemingly stared into nothingness. "I once was one, too, you know? I've born children and lost them as men on the battlefield. An endless circle of life and death, because none of them ever reached immortality. And so they all disappeared behind the veil..." She shook herself out of her stupor and the strange expression disappeared.

"But Lizzie _has_ no children", Craig remarked, his brow furrowed.

The Morrigan's face lit up like a Christmas tree. "But she had one once", she said with a nearly manic glint in those blue pupils. "I was at the hospital. And let me tell you, there was so much blood... It wasn't old, the little one. Just a few weeks along, just a few cells. But I could see what could have been, gaisgeach. A little boy with blond hair and her eyes, a ghost child playing at the foot of her bed while she cried into her pillows."

He stared at her with wide eyes. "You took him."

"But of course." She blinked.

"You should have left him with her!"

The Morrigan frowned. "So that he would haunt her? The dead have no place in this world, gaisgeach. And I always took care of broken things."

"For your army." He didn't hide his disgust.

"Of course not!" She threw the doll at his head. "Children have no place in a war."

He furrowed his brow and concentrated on a row of dirty glasses in front of him. "You're not making sense", he whispered.

"Chaos seldom does."

"It does", he replied, looking around the pandemonium his kitchen had become. "Always. So explain."

She looked at him with praise in her eyes. "People underestimate you, don't they, gaisgeach? They see bloodshot eyes and conclude the state of your braincells from that."

"They wouldn't be wrong."

Sparkling laughter poured out of her mouth like a freshly cracked bottle of champagne at a victory celebration. "Ghosts are like anchors, gaisgeach. They keep people in moments and Lizzie... Lizzie was so close to breaking like a frail piece of wood under too much pressure and she had to run..."

"Run", he repeated and furrowed his brow. "I don't know if that's the explanation for taking him or for killing him in the first place."

The Morrigan smiled, a small, sad kind of smile. "She had to run", she repeated and Craig didn't know what to say.  
"You're not a good person", he finally pressed out and his hand, closing around one of the dirty glasses, trembled.

"I'm not a person _per se_. Seeing as I'm not human", the Morrigan said. "Good and bad are arbitrary things."

"How wonderful for you", he said, finishing up the joint. "Does that mean you're waiting for Lizzie to stop running?"

Something clattered outside and then he heard voices creeping closer. Someone knocked on the door and then the key turned in the lock.

The Morrigan leaned in. "I think Lizzie found some other anchors in this world, gaisgeach. She's so cute you know? So confused and in denial, but so wonderfully _in love_..."

He heard Lizzie in the hallway, loudly singing along the lines of "Another Brick in the Wall" from Pink Floyd and repeatedly bumping into walls. Someone seemed to catch her and try to reason with her. It was a male voice, but Craig didn't recognize it.

"Do you see it?", the Morrigan whispered in his ear, her spindly arms with the teeth bracelets wrapped around his neck, her feet planted somewhere on the seat of his chair.

"The confusion? The small anchors holding her and how she doesn't know why she can't move her hands so freely, her arms so widely anymore?"

In that exact second Lizzie burst into the room. Half laced up combat boots, torn jeans and her leather jacket, as well as the nest on top of her head and the lack of make-up painted the picture of chaos, the Morrigan had foreseen. "So_ in love_, gaisgeach... Can you see it?"

Craig only saw the glazed look in her eyes and the bottle of cheap vodka in her hand while the girl dropped into the chair the Morrigan had so recently vacated.

"I hate hospitals", Lizzie remarked with a slur and a heavy nod of her head and Craig realised that she must have been drinking for some time now. The Morrigan was still wrapped around him and so he lit up the joint in his hand and breathed in.

"I really fucking hate them!", his former flatmate cried out and glared at the bottle in her hand. "So here I am running after him and he... _that idiot isn't even bloody there_. He's just not there!" She sounded horrified and shook her head like a marionette. "How can he...", she banged the bottle against the table and he blew out some of the smoke to let it waver around him like fog. The Morrigan's breath still tickled in his ear. "How can he just _go_, Craig? How does he do that? We fight and go and then he _really goes away_ and how can one be so stupid? So absolutely _idiotic_... He..." She gurgled, swallowed and if the fog hadn't been surrounding him, then he would have been shocked, because it looked like Lizzie was _crying_. And Lizzie never cried.

"You told him to go", a calm voice from the hallway remarked and then a tall, blond man stepped into the kitchen and sighed. "Papillon, you more or less said that he was the last man on earth you'd ever -"

"Yes, but he wasn't supposed to just go", Lizzie protested with burning eyes, holding herself upright with the bottle in her hand. "Not really, not completely. He wasn't supposed to pack up his car and drive back to_ fucking Derbyshire_!"

"And how should he -", the blonde man started and the Morrigan giggled in Craig's ear.  
"Oh", she whispered. "Is he not to your liking, warrior? You prefer them tall and blond, don't you?"

A flash of fine, blond hair against sheets and laughs on a Sunday morning in bed sometime in autumn filled Craig's head and he hastily took another drag to dispel the picture.

"He told me he loved me", Lizzie exploded at that moment with a nearly desperate expression on her face and Craig felt the Morrigan's teeth piercing the skin of his neck. "He said it like it was god's fucking gift on earth! Such a fucking mercy of his lordship, that he could get himself to admit that and he... he.. He said it like it was the _fucking most important thing in the whole wide world_!"

"Papillon -"

"And then he just got up and went away. _Again_. Because he always goes. Always and always and always." She shook her head. "Only this time he wrote a letter... And I was right, Richard. He's a bloody saint. Jesus incarnated or something..."

"She wouldn't be so far off", the Morrigan whispered in Craig's ear. "That guy has an even severer moral codex than the bloody Pope. I sometimes wonder how he can even breathe without it hurting."

"He took up all the blame for the accident so that his little sister wouldn't break a fucking nail! He lost everything and he... he acts as if it's nothing and just marches on stoically and... Fuck, did anyone ever check what kind of shit he's on? Because that's not bloody..."

"I checked", the man – Richard – said and tiredly ran a hand over his eyes. "He's clean."

"Fucking hell", Lizzie muttered and bit her trembling lower lip.

"Can you see?", the Morrigan whispered. "Can you see how she fights against the ropes? She doesn't want to admit it, but the Túatha Dé Danann have already linked their life lines, have tattooed them into the other's skin and sewn bones to bones. It hurts, you know? To be so far apart."

"I know", Craig whispered into the fog and thought about strong, yet delicate fingers and how they ran over hard planes and edges and how breathtakingly exhilarating it had been and how the expression to get under someone's skin had turned into something so literal he still could feel it edged and carved into him. "Phantom limb pains."

"You were only stitched together for a short time", the Morrigan whispered and he saw her wide eyes shimmering in the periphery of his vision. "It wasn't supposed to last. You only got a few moments, because the gods loved you so much."

"But never enough", Craig whispered, fighting against the pain and the smoke in his lungs.

"No", the Morrigan whispered. "Never enough."

"How was Darcy supposed to know that he shouldn't have left like that?", Richard asked, searching for three decently clean shot glasses. "You got impossible standards, Papillon. And you're bloody scary when angry."

"Because he promised me", Lizzie replied quite stubbornly. "I asked him not to go and _he promised me not to go_. But then he dos. Every fucking time."

"Then tell him not to", Richard suggested, pouring the Vodka into the glasses. "Ask him to stay."

"And how am I supposed to do that? He's in _motherfucking Derbyshire_. Smoke signs don't reach that far."

"E-Mail? Telephone? Fucking Facebook?", Richard suggested, crossing his legs. He was handsome, Craig had to admit. In this confident, experienced, nothing-shocks-me kind of way that had always fascinated Craig. Additionally, the man wore eye liner and his nails were painted an interesting shade of purple. He could have just put a sign on his forehead, it would have been less subtle and Craig envied him that confidence.

"You were always looking at yourself in the mirror", the Morrigan whispered, stroking his shoulders with her tiny hands. "For hours at a time. Only to be sure that no one could see it in your eyes. On your clothes. Your posture. How tragic if it had been the same shampoo telling them all that you were fucking your best friend behind the shed while they were crying for more beer inside?

Craig raised his free left hand and slowly wrapped it around the Morrigan's thin neck. And squeezed.

And then suddenly, there was only air between his fingers, her laugh flooding the room and a raven sitting on the edge of the table, seemingly mocking him.

"I went to the hospital", Lizzie said then, sullen and still slurring. She distributed the glasses and held hers up for a toast. Craig, silently caught in the smoke and with the raven in view, also held up his glass and toasted the others.

"But he wasn't there, Richard", she finished her sentence after swallowing the burning liquid and grimacing. "He wasn't there and when I... I tried to apologize... on Sunday, he... he just didn't listen and... and he never listens, Richard. _Never_. I talk all the time and give... give thousands of hints and he... he just _doesn't bloody listen_. He thinks I'm a stupid slut, that's the only thing his two brain cells tell him when rubbing together. That or that I'm a fucking _murderer_..." She hiccuped and it would have been cute if she hadn't looked like she was close to crying.

"And the thing is... Craig, you can account for that. The thing is, that I haven't.. with no one.. I haven't bloody slept with anyone since... since _fucking September last year_. So please explain.. explain to me", she hiccuped again, "how I can be a slut. He... he asked me if I did that often... kissing people and then disappearing..."

"You did it with me", Richard chimed in in an attempt to lighten the mood, but Lizzie just glared at him with heavy eye lids.

"But never when I'm sober!", she cried out, seemingly outraged. "I hate even touching people when sober, right, Craig? I fucking_ hate it_."

Craig just nodded and Lizzie seemed to take that as enough incentive to continue her tirade. "People are... people are fucking terrifying, so why... why the fuck should I want to touch someone willingly? And I... I let him kiss me and I... I kissed him back and I... I was sober, Richard. I was fucking _sober_."

"I know, Papillon", Richard whispered, softly tugging on one strand of her wildly stuck up hair. "Darcy's like a twelve-year-old with a crush, who has no idea how to talk to girls. He's pulling pig tails, because you confuse him and he's never been confused in his life. He knew Emily since he was little, darling. No one ever stood up to him and called his bluff." He leaned in to her. "He's just as new in this as you."

"Oh, how cute!", the Morrigan gushed. She'd taken up human shape again and was sitting cross-legged on the table, inspecting dead butterflies on pins.

"He called me a murderer", Lizzie whispered, her head dropping on Richard's shoulder while playing with the vodka bottle and the glasses. "Just like everybody else. They also called me

that and I didn't think that he... but...", she sobbed silently. "And the worst is... they're _right_, Richard." The blond man started protesting, but Lizzie cut him off. "I'm a murderer, I killed it. I didn't take enough care and then... _then there was so much blood._.." She'd hidden her face in Richard's coat, whispering incoherently.

"She would have named him Theodore", the Morrigan said in passing, turning the butterfly in her hand.

"Theodore", Craig whispered and the sound of the name shook Lizzie out of her stupor. "Yes?"

"Why Theodore?"

The darkhaired girl stared at him with bloodshot, glazed eyes, not finding the question strange at all. "So that he'd have something from me", she whispered. "He was supposed to be mine and not his."

"Her middle name is Theodora", the Morrigan, ever so helpfully added. "In case you forgot. Such a primitive way of claiming people. Tsst. Humans and their definitions. You all think you need them like air to breathe when actually all they do is make you suffer and frustrate you because they just won't fit."

Craig furrowed his brow and the Morrigan cooly raised an eyebrow. "Tell me one thing, gaisgeach. Would you have suffered as much if kissing boys hadn't been the definition of being gay? If people hadn't beat you up for being a poof? If it had just been another way of love?"

"We wouldn't have had enough time either way", Craig whispered into the fog. "It wasn't meant to be." The two others looked at him strangely. "How did you escape Anne", he asked Lizzie in an attempt at deflection. "I thought she took you into preventive custody in her apartment on Sunday."

"She did", the girl muttered, pouring the second round of vodka into the glasses. "But I sneaked out. Even the ambergirl has to sleep from time to time, right?"

Craig grinned. "And what did you want to do at the hospital aside from kicking Darcy's ass?"

Lizzie grimaced. "I hate hospitals", she muttered, chucking down the next shot. Craig and Richard followed suit.  
"She'll probably never wake up again", she then said, filling her glass clumsily so that some of the liquid spilled on the table. "Excessive brain damage and no reflexes to speak of, no spontaneous breathing... " She climbed on her chair and swallowed another shot of vodka without including the others.

"A woman in the A&amp;E", Richard explained at Craig's questioning look. "Car accident."

"Car accident!", Lizzie also cried out and pirouetted on the chair. Richard watched her with worry and tried to keep her upright, but she jumped from her stage and stumbled a bit to the side. "Such a mundane thing. Car. Road. _Boom_. Gone." She laughed. "Did you know how often I drove a car when I wasn't quite...", another giggle, "from this world? No? Oh, it could have happened so often... _Boom_ and then... gone." Lizzie gazed at Richard with wide eyes. "Why didn't it just make _Boom_?", she asked in a childlike voice. "Why didn't I just go away?"

"Papillon, that's a question for a priest, don't you -"

She interrupted him laughing. "Now tell me, how do you take religion?", she asked him the crucial question, barely able to keep upright with all the giggling she did. The Morrigan, too, seemed amused.

"Well, no one can say she doesn't know her Goethe", his unwelcome guest said lightly and started to pin a desperately fluttering butterfly on a needle.

"Lizzie, you know my opinion on organised group activities", Richard replied frowning while watching Lizzie, who was busy searching through the cupboards.

"There's no coffee", Craig said ever so helpfully, but Lizzie brushed him off. "Don't tell me you still keep your treasure in the lavatory cistern?", she cried out, but Craig's blank face was answer enough.

"I can't believe... you're still using my old hiding places", she said, shaking her head, her voice even heavier than before. She emptied out the white plastic bag, took the smaller packages and threw them on the table.

"Oh no...", Richard muttered, closing his eyes.

"Oh yes", Lizzie retorted and put three of the small white pills in her mouth. "Swallow", she ordered and drank her vodka.

"Oh stop that shit, Papillon", Richard scolded her. "I've been there and I've done that. It's not as much fun as it looks like."

She stuck out her tongue at him and giggled. He closed her mouth with one finger. "To stay on topic, it was your dear Darcy, who got me out of there and put me into med school."

"He's fucking Jesus incarnated, I told you so", Lizzie grumbled, pushing one of the pills in Craig's mouth. The Morrigan hummed something and it sounded like part of a ritual.

"The first step is fulfilled", the strange creature with the shark teeth whispered and pulled one of those teeth from her bracelets and threw it into Lizzie's glass. Craig saw it sink to the bottom and pink streaks mix with the clear liquid of the Vodka. Lizzie didn't seem to notice a thing.

"She could've been me." Lizzie had her hands curled around the collar of Richard's shirt and seemed to be talking about the mysterious woman in the A&amp;E again. "Or I could've been her..." She seemed to need to concentrate for a moment. "She could've lived and I could've died, you know?" Richard stared at her worriedly. "She's my what-if and I'm hers. What if I didn't run away? What if I had born that baby? Then I'd be her, Richard. I'd be married and have a beautiful, little boy, who saves me from him with a fork and then I drive away with the car and it makes _Boom_. _Boom_ and I'm gone. That could've been me, Richard."

"But you're not, Papillon, you're -"

"Or she could've been me. She could've run away earlier. When she knew she was pregnant, she could've run. Far, far away. But who knows if it had survived. If it had survived all that stress and misery. Is that fair, Richard? To gamble with a baby's life? Trade one life against another? Does that make me selfish? Does that make me a _murderer_?"

To the end she sounded more and more hysteric and then she half clung to Richard and sobbed. The blond man pulled her on his lap and held her close and Craig, caught in his fog, could only watch.

"She came to the hospital this morning and demanded to see Darcy", the blond man said softly after a while when Lizzie's shoulders had stopped trembling like leaves. "She was completely rattled and held this letter in her hand and asked to see Darcy over and over again even though the nurse at the reception told her that he isn't working there any longer." Richard sighed and poured Craig and himself some more vodka. "Fortunately, she doesn't either", he patted Lizzie's back, "I talked to Aunt Catherine and persuaded her to see her training as finished one week earlier than planned. I think Anne threatened her with several... _unmentionable_ things. Whatever." Another sigh and Craig couldn't help but stare, because this man in front of him was so different, was so similar, yet he didn't suffer... It was... bewildering.

"Darling of fortune", the Morrigan said. "Blessed by the gods he was born under dancing stars and the wind will always be in his back." It was so close to what his grandmother, who had called her daughter's religion a kind of "fanatic cannibalism", told him in her bedtime stories that Craig felt his throat go dry.

"Then she went to the patient's room and the nurses there told her that the woman probably wouldn't wake up again. The damage to her brain is excessive as Lizzie said. That tipped her over the edge." Richard shook his head. "I found her there, but the only place she wanted go was here, so...", he shrugged, "there we are."

Craig raised an eyebrow and pulverized one of the pills between his fingers before putting it in his drink and swallow it down together with the vodka. The soft, warm feeling of euphoria started flooding his veins, blurring his senses and the Morrigan, too, began purring like a cat.

"It's just a bit dreary here", the blond man remarked. "Not that I wouldn't enjoy a bit of patina and a realistic look into student's lives, but I think considering the current mood we need an environment with a bit more...", he looked around in the kitchen, which nightfall had painted in various shades of grey, "...colour."

"Fortune's darling", the Morrigan muttered when Craig stood up, leaving the gruesome butterflies on the table. "Richard, the lucky one, the colour child. Paint the world in your colours if you don't like it and make it your own", she whispered before turning into a raven and taking place on Craig's shoulder. Her claws pierced the skin there painfully.

"Come on, Papillon", Richard whispered to Lizzie, who had curled up on his lap like a cat. "Let's look for some colour."

He got a grumbling Lizzie on her legs and with Craig's help he gave her a piggyback ride. "Where?", he asked Craig, who was drinking the last of the Vodka.

"_Philip's_", the boy answered. "Right around the house." Richard nodded in agreement and they started to make their way downstairs, but before they left the kitchen, Lizzie turned her head as if to look for Craig and her searching gaze fell on the glasses on the table.  
"Richard", she whispered tiredly. "Why is there a tooth in my glass?" But the blond man just hummed non-committally and Craig hastily pulled the door close behind them.

"Craig", Lizzie whispered when they were outside the pub and her face was pale in the blueish twilight. Still on Richard's back she leaned her cheek against his coat and stretched out a hand. "My beautiful Craig." Her fingers were trembling when she cradled his face and the raven's claws curled even tighter around his shoulder.  
"Your wounds are nearly healed", she whispered. "But never truly, right?" She smiled at him with sad, green eyes and he took her hand, closed his much rougher, bonier fingers around hers.

"Never truly", he breathed and he didn't know if it was the light or his blurred senses, but when she held her hand just so, it looked like there were fine lines under her knuckles, barely noticeable bumps, but something was wrong with them. It looked like they all stemmed from the same injury, too regular to be a coincidence and -

"That's what happens if you drop a piano lid with full force on dreamily playing fingers", the Morrigan remarked despite her raven shape, nipping at his ear with her beak. "Just because she didn't pay any attention to him for two minutes."

"Who?", he asked both Lizzie and the Morrigan. Lizzie's face contorted, became oddly soft and vulnerable. She pulled her fingers out of his grasp. "Fire", she said, jumping from Richard's back. "Flames consuming you", she added just when the Morrigan whispered "Cavanaugh" and started giggling like mad.

"It's never the weapons killing you, is it?", Craig replied and Lizzie smiled sadly. "Always the people carrying them."

"So wise, gaisgeach", he heard the Morrigan say. "Does that mean you swore of vengeance?"

Craig waited until Lizzie and Richard were safely inside the pub and found a table until he answered. "I'll kill him for that, Morrigan. There you got your vengeance."

She laughed delightedly. "Darcy swore the same, gaisgeach, but I see more potential in you if you join my army."

He took one last drag from his joint and blew out the smoke. "Haven't I already?", he asked and the Morrigan laughed.

It was a rather quiet round that evening at Philip's. Craig was silent most of the time and only answered Richard's questions from time to time. He was watching Lizzie, who drunk as she was only smiled without sound while Richard tried to cheer her up. Sometimes her smile dropped off her face and she whispered something about someone named Emily only for Richard to lean in, tug at her hair and mutter something about red lingerie until she smiled again. Once, the blond man even told the entire pub light bulb jokes for fifteen minutes until Marley granted them mercy and turned on the music.

"Come, Milady", Richard prompted Lizzie and pulled her to her feet. "Do you grant me the honour of this dance?"

"Only if you kill the dragon, Sire", Lizzie replied in kind with a bit more of her usual humour.

"Done, Papillon", the blond man muttered and slowly they began dancing along to Rise Against' "_Swing Life Away_".

"And they'd be such a cute couple", the Morrigan remarked. She'd taken up residence on the table and brought her knitting along with her. Upon closer inspection however he saw that her knitting needles were bare bones with carved in runes and shuddered.

"Do you think?", Craig asked and watched Richard spin Lizzie around until her hair was flowing and she laughed like a little girl. "They look happy certainly."

The Morrigan looked up and furrowed her small, childlike brow. "Richard would be easy", she then said. "Like breathing. Soft and burbling and without pain."

"And that's not good?", he demanded to know and saw how Lizzie looked at the blond man, how she got on her tip toes and kissed him. Tempestuously and hastily and more out of desperation than anything else. It was a metaphor for the way Lizzie did everything in her life ever since he'd met her three or four years ago and she'd preached about the dangers of more or less legal highs until he'd given her his joint, effectively shutting her up.

"Lizzie never does things by half. She's an extreme. Either or not at all. She loves, she hates, she knows no middle way. Richard would be like a drug, but he wouldn't be the truth."

She knitted another row of something, that looked like a hot pink scarf with green stripes and Craig saw Richard return the kiss, softly and carefully and more like he was petting someone's hair reassuringly than anything else. He pulled her back by her shoulders and Craig saw Lizzie fighting against the tears and Richard hugging her and then pulling her from the makeshift dance floor.

"I'm taking her upstairs", Richard said to him when they passed the table and Craig nodded is ascent. "I'll come up later."

"Darcy's going to be difficult", the Morrigan said to Craig and continued knitting. "But the threads are spun and the dies are cast. The rest is patience."

"Patience", Craig snorted, staring into his pint. "I hate waiting."

"Well, I waited for a long time", the Morrigan replied, putting down her knitting. "Ever since Ireland and the box matches in the underground and your brother's brutality." She scrunched up her nose in distaste. "Did no one ever teach them some manners?"

"They wanted to teach me a lesson", Craig whispered. "Show the poof what it means to be a man."

"They beat you up", the Morrigan countered and shook her head. "Four against one is no fight. That's a death squad."

"They wanted to show me. Because Michael made it and got a woman pregnant. They wanted to exorcise the devil in me." He remembered the feeling of acute nausea when he saw his friend – his lover – again after all those years, his hand placed on his wife's swollen belly and it was like someone took a brush and tainted all his memories with sticky, black paint. The feeling of emptiness when there was no anchor holding him anymore and all that violence that followed. It wasn't surprising, he thought. He'd gone too deep, had opened one too many gates and looked into the abyss for too long and it was only logical that one day it would look right back into him. He'd scratched at the wounds of the world and took something from its depths with him. And that something was sitting across from him on the table.

"And all that time the devil was already with you", the Morrigan laughed, giggling like a small child.

"I'm tired", he said and stood up. "We should go."

The Morrigan looked at him, huge, wide, strangely inverted eyes. "Yes, it's time."

It was time.

It was quiet in the apartment when they entered. The cool darkness enveloped everything and a quick glance into the bedroom showed him Lizzie, who, with her arms around Richard lay there sleeping, a sullen, determined look on her face. She and Charlotte had been his family and there'd been so many nights where one of them had slept in his bed, a steady hum of breaths and heartbeats carrying him through the night and it had dulled the pain of loosing his own, his real family.

"You never wanted to leave your family", the Morrigan whispered somewhere behind him. "They cast you off and it tore you apart that they didn't want you anymore when it all came out. But you never stopped loving them."

Craig nodded, his eyes fixed on Lizzie's pale face. It had been a perverse sort of masochism. Loving people, who'd never accept him, loving a mother, who cried at his sight, a father, who couldn't even manage that and brothers, who wouldn't touch him in fear of catching something. He'd loved Michael, who'd never belonged to him and had lived all those years in limbo, cut off from everyone and barely held in balance by Lizzie, Charlotte and Anne. They were fugitives, too. Without names, without families, without homes, but none of them had ever wanted to go back. They'd all looked for truth, but none of them had longed for burying themselves in an illusion so that his mother wouldn't have to cry whenever she saw him.

"Forgive me, Lizzie", he whispered and closed the door. He wrote the same words and some more on the back of a shopping list for lube and gums, talked about forgiveness and absolved them of any blame. He wrote Charlotte the same and placed both letters on the kitchen table. They'd find them. In the morning.

He closed the door to the bathroom and carefully locked it. He wasn't surprised to see the Morrigan sitting in the washbasin as if it was boat.

"That's it?", he asked and the small girl with the huge eyes looked at him and smiled softly.

"It's whatever the hell you want it to be."

He nodded and reached for the pillbox, he'd hidden under the washbasin. Seventeen should be enough.

It was routine and a strangely calming one at that and when he'd swallowed them all down, he turned to face the Morrigan.

"Please...", he whispered. "One last time."

His guest nodded and hopped from the washbasin. "One last dance, gaisgeach", she said and grew taller, her limbs stretched and became more human. Blond hair and pale skin instead of her ink black opposite and then the boy he loved stood in front of him. A perfect copy, one last illusion.

"I love you", he whispered and kissed him. And it tasted like it once did, felt like it once did so long, so long ago, but the pills, the dull euphoria numbed everything and he felt himself fading away.

"Morrigan", he whispered and the person that looked like Michael bared its sixty-four teeth and smiled.

"Come with me, gaisgeach", she whispered and stretched out a hand. "Follow me."

And while Craig's heartbeat slowed down and his breathing suspended, somewhere in the apartment a girl woke up and with her heart beating wildly she knew that something was wrong, was horribly, horribly wrong and the last thing Craig heard where the loud bangs against the bathroom door and Lizzie's desperate screams.

"Craig! Craig,_ no...!_"

\- End of Part 2 -

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**A/N: So this is it. I really loved Richard in this and hated Darcy and I was so close to get R. and L. together in this one because they're just so cute. I'm a mess. Please, someone save me.**

**Greets, Teddy**


	30. Chapter 29 Thirteen Days

**A/N: Quick shout out from England. No, I didn't drown in the ocean. No, I wasn't turned into a vampire. No, this story is not abandoned. **

**I just needed some time out. Mainly due to it being pretty depressing and didn't feel it, but then some medical issues happened and I had to try to figure out the health care system here, which is not fun, I tell you. **

**This is Jane's POV. Be warned.**

**Soundtrack: Hello - Adele, Say Something - A Great Big World feat. Christina Aguilera, In the Sun - Joseph Arthur, Book of Love - Peter Gabriel, Hello - Evanescence **

**Disclaimer: Wickham... just happened. I'm blaming caffeine. Also WARNING FOR MAJOR VIOLENCE (but this is rated M so...) **

* * *

**Chapter 29: Thirteen Days  
**

Day 1

Jane Bennet didn't know what she was supposed to do.

She was right in the middle of absolute chaos. There were take-away containers and dirty dishes on the table right next to a forgotten bouquet and – _God_, was that a goldfish swimming around in an amber coloured liquid that looked distinctly like whiskey?

Two little boys stood on two chairs in front of the sink and appeared to be conducting a scientific experiment with the apparent end goal of producing as much foam with as little washing-up liquid as possible. They were both dripping wet and arguing.

"Liam, you can't just mix the two sorts! That's cheating!"

"And you can't just change the rules because you're losing, you… loser!" the other one revolted and slapped a handful of foam onto his brother's face.

"I'm not losing!" the counter-attack sounded and both of them got lost in one big '_do not – do too_' screaming match that revived Jane's headache from the multiple hour train ride she'd undertaken.

"Excuse me?" she asked faintly, dropping her luggage. Both blond heads jerked around to see her and they presented a united front in about three seconds flat. It would've been quite impressive if the foam hadn't still been stuck to their hair and cheeks.

"Who are you?" the first one asked, eyeing her suspiciously. "And what do you want?" the other one added and Jane knew that the elf-like ears, the wild if dripping wet hair and the flashing dark eyes could only mean trouble.

"Is Lizzie here?" Jane tried to deflect the question but she had no luck.

"Why do you wanna know that?" the one on the right demanded to know, arms crossed in front of his chest and his chin raised defiantly.

"She's my sister," Jane explained impatiently. The prickling nervousness that had been her steady companion ever since Anne had called, flared up again.

The two blond devils' eyes narrowed. "Anne is Lizzie's sister," the one on the left declared with all the settled conviction of a six-year old and his brother – she was convinced they were twins – nodded at the same time. "We're a family", he added, twisting the knife in Jane's chest just a little bit further.

"Well, I'm her sister, too and I'd really like to see her," she replied with forced calm and bit her lip.

One of them sniggered and threw another load of foam at his brother's head. "Are you the White Witch?" he asked while the other one was busy wiping foam out of his eyes and cursing like a sailor.

"Pardon me, the white _what_?" Jane asked in bewilderment.

"The White Witch," the one on the right explained once he got rid of the foam and avenged his honour by kicking his brother's shin. "Because you kidnapped and dragged her up north."

"Yes, Daddy had to save her with a golden ticket!" his brother exclaimed.

"And an elevator!"

"But she made it." The left twin glared at her. "You weren't able to keep her. She spent Christmas with us."

Jane stared at the two and it had been years, _years_ since a class of first years had been able to make her cry, but now she felt her throat constrict and she stared at the two with burning eyes.

Propaganda, she thought. Perspectives. To them I'm the bad one. "That sounds… _wonderful_," she forced herself to say and curled her hands into fists. "Is Lizzie here?"

"Lizzie is in her room," a voice sounded from the hallway and the person she wanted to see the least walked into the room.

"Annie!" one of the twins cried out and threw himself, covered in foam and dripping wet, into Anne's arms who was barely able to catch him. "The White Witch is here," he mumbled into her shoulder, pointing his finger at Jane who felt more like the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz and not like the white version from Narnia.

"Shht," said the girl, Lizzie regarded as her sister despite having four actually blood-related siblings and put the culprit back on his chair. "Didn't Sophie tell you to wash the dishes?"

They both glared at her one last time before turning around. "Yes, but Liam's cheating and using two types of soap!"

"Henry, did you write down that that's forbidden beforehand?" Anne asked sternly and arched an eyebrow. The little boy grumbled.

"There you have it. Now, come on. The plates are going to grow legs and run away at the rate you're going."

They both stared at her with wide eyes. "Really?"

"Yes, and they're also going to eat you at that point," Anne added, having seen the dangerous glint in their eyes. "So no mould experiments, you hear me?"

"That's not exactly educationally valuable, don't you think?" Jane asked when the two boys first pouted and then started piling the plates only to drop them into the sink from the highest point they could reach. It splashed and sloshed and what hadn't been thoroughly soaked already at that point, was dripping now.

"They're learning something, aren't they?" Anne countered with a twitch around her lips. She looked tired, Jane noted. They're were dark shadows under those disconcertingly shimmering eyes and her hair stood up wilder than Lizzie's on a Sunday morning before ten.

Jane's gaze flickered back down to the dark spots on her cobalt blue Chanel coat, wondering if it was worth the effort to get worked up about that. "It's dangerous," she said, unable to let go of her work persona for even a day. It was in her blood to care for others. Four sisters did that to you and even if none of them wanted her care and protection anymore, didn't mean that the impulse had lessened.

Anne snorted delicately. "The worst thing to happen are broken plates and scraped knees. Believe me, without occupation they're going to pull a Kästner and jump out of a window with nothing but an umbrella just to test out gravity."

"They're board games," Jane suggested, cringing at every clashing sound.

"That's just ammunition," Anne said dismissively and her quiet laugh reminded Jane of why she didn't like the other woman.

"Tea?" the woman in question asked right at that point and held out a steaming cup for her. Jane inclined her head in silent thanks and took a sip. It burned down her throat.

"Ginger," Anne said lightly at her barely suppressed gasp and smiled in apology. "And a bit too strong it seems."

"People can drink that?" Jane managed to get out and coughed a bit more. The other girl looked at her in slight bewilderment.

"Ability is one thing," she said, pouring herself a cup of that devil's concoction. "Opening one's mouth and swallowing isn't that hard a feat – whiskey is my prime example for that. But wanting is a completely different ball game and at the moment I dearly need some energy, but coffee is one step too close to an addiction for my taste." She shrugged.

"Is that the reason why that goldfish is breathing said whiskey?" Jane asked. Talking in circles was something Lizzie seemed to have learned from Anne and it gave her a headache.

"Liam and Henry!" Anne cried out, aghast when she discovered the meaning of Jane's words and stood up to rescue the fish into a glass of water before emptying the bowl. "What was this supposed to look like finished?"

"An experiment," the first one peeped up, seemingly chastened by Anne's strict mien. "We wanted to pretty up Sikes' bowl and thought it was a nice colour."

"To cheer up Lizzie!" the other one chimed in and Jane was pretty sure he'd said that on purpose to appease Anne.

It seemed to work. "There's over 40% alcohol in that liquid, children," she sighed. "It's a miracle Sikes survived at all."

"Sikes?" Jane asked, against her will interested.

"Lizzie read 'Oliver Twist' with them before Christmas," Anne explained with a sigh, slinging her oversized, colourful scarf tighter around her shoulders. "They have a soft spot for villains these two. Especially because they wished for a lab rat as a present."

Jane gazed at her questioningly.

"A drama in two sentences. They wanted a rat, but Mus didn't want to clean up cages. They got a goldfish instead and named him Sikes. End of story."

"Why did they want a lab rat in the first place?" Jane asked, feeling like she was stuck in some weird carrousel. She wanted to get to Lizzie. That was the most important thing.

Anne shrugged and made her way out of the kitchen. "Because Sophie forbid them from using Fritzchen any longer. The poor fellow walked around with pink curls for a week.

"Who is Fritzchen?" Jane asked, scurrying after Anne.

The woman with the yellow eyes shot her a glance over her shoulder. "The poodle of course," she said as if it was obvious. "Are you coming now?"

Day 3

Lizzie didn't talk.

No, that wasn't quite true. Lizzie wasn't _there_.

She hadn't wanted to believe it when Darcy had told her so long ago. The urge to defend her sister had been overwhelming even with that nagging voice inside her head whispering that perhaps he was right and she had told herself, Darcy and Charlie and everyone wiling to hear that Lizzie had probably just been tired. Med School demanded a lot of students, didn't it? And to top it off, she was living in that unruly neighbourhood, it just had to happen at some point…

She'd cringed every time she'd heard herself talk like that. Charlie had just smiled as always and Darcy had had his own thoughts on the matter.

Jane had never been very skilled at lying.

And so she'd waited for Lizzie to come to her of her own accord. Jane was her sister after all, the only family she had in London, but the telephone had remained mute and the doorbell hadn't rang and when Lizzie had finally shown up, soaking wet and beaming, Jane hadn't been able to help herself and had flung herself in her sister's arms. Not that Lizzie had appreciated that.

Her little sister had been like a stranger.

Just as unfamiliar as the girl sitting on the window sill in front of her.

"Come on, Lizzie," she tried the voice she normally reserved for sullen first years missing their parents and tried to get her sister to look at her without touching the girl. That had been an unmitigated disaster the one time she'd tried it. "Don't you want to eat something? Look, Sophie made some vegetable dauphinoise…" She held a fork full of carrots and melting cheese under Lizzie's nose, but the dark haired girl didn't even react and continued to obsessively fill the pages of the journal in her lap with barely readable words.

"It's such a nice day outside," Jane continued once she'd given up trying to feed Lizzie and sat down in the chair beside her. "I think it's the first sunny day in months. Look, how pretty it is. The first cafés put their tables outside and have you seen all the little sparrows? There's a whole family nesting in the rain gutter and I'm pretty sure it's their fault I woke up at five this morning." Jane tried a smile, tried to act like she and Lizzie were actually having a conversation.

"Don't look like that. You know how difficult it is for me to fall back asleep once I'm woken up after three am. I'm blaming you for that, did you know? You always sneaked into my bed when it was thundering outside and with cold feet and sharp knees poking in my sides it's really not that easy to go back to sleep." She sighed in mock resignation. "It never bothered you, did it, Lizzie-lee? Lizzie-Bee? _Lizzie-Lu_? She tried all the nicknames she knew but no reaction.

"Keep going," a voice from the doorway whispered and out of the corner of her eyes Jane saw Anne coming closer. The scent of tea and biscuits wafted in the air like a soft breeze.

"People are already dressing in summer clothes," Jane continued with forced cheer. "Even though it's only just March and we've barely reached the fifteen degree mark. Yet I've already seen three people wearing cropped shirts." She paused for a moment. "And two of them weren't female."

Anne laughed lightly from where she stood in the doorway and Jane saw that Lizzie had put the pen aside. "Do you remember the first time I visited you here…." She swallowed the bitterness that came up at those words. "You dragged me right through Camden Market and I… I had absolutely no idea so many people could exist in one place. Really. And we were sitting on one of these stone walls and ate Paella out of plastic bowls and I felt like I was twelve again." Jane laughed quietly and was tempted to rest her head against Lizzie's hip, but she desisted before her sister started trembling again.

"Go on," Anne whispered right next to her. Jane swallowed down the snappy remark burning on her tongue.

"And someone there wore this absolutely gorgeous red dress and I know how I said I wanted one just like that – I'm pretty sure it was the heat getting to my head – and that I had to ask the woman where she'd gotten hers" Jane laughed at the memory. "And then you were giggling like mad and the woman who wasn't a woman but a very, very fashionable man turned around and curtseyed. And while I was choking, you just laughed and told me '_Welcome to London_'."

"She told me about that," Anne said lightly, taking Lizzie's journal and pen out of her hands. Lizzie didn't resist. "She told me how you nearly asphyxiated on a bite of rice when the object of your curiosity called you a very enchanting angel and kissed your hand."

Jane smiled, a fine, very thin smile and tried not to be bitter when it came to Anne. Which was difficult, especially when she had to watch Anne simply thrust the plate of food in her sister's hands and command her to eat without her jerking back.

"How do you do that?" she asked, not able to keep all the envy out of her voice. Anne raised an eyebrow and Jane felt like a small child every time she looked at her like that. Amber eyes, Lizzie called them with a mischievous laugh. Jane had always found them creepy.

"How do I do what?" she asked, wrapping the ends of her colourful scarf back around her body.

"Touching her without her screaming," Jane bit out, clawing her nails – perfectly filed and shimmering with pink polish – into her palms before letting go and tracing the red marks.

Anne shook her head and stroked Lizzie's hair slowly. "You all want something from her. Attention, acknowledgement, love… As if she could give you that…"

"And you don't?" Jane asked with a frown and saw how Anne's gaze fell on that other, exotic looking woman with the strange name Wentworth who was standing in the kitchen directing the rest of the guard while they ate their vegetable dauphinoise.

"Not from her," Anne whispered and there was an expression of such abject longing in her eyes that it stole the breath from Jane's lungs for a second. But then it disappeared within the blink of an eye and with a shake of her head Anne turned around, her scarf billowing around her.

"Stupid children," Jane heard her mutter and she wasn't sure who she meant.

Day 4

"No, Mum. Believe me, that's not a good-"

"But why the heavens not? If Lizzie's really doing as badly as you say, then she needs her mother there!"

Jane bit back a comment about how Sophie Groveland was here and Lizzie probably wanted her around ten times more than her own flesh and blood. "Mum, I don't think you can help Lizzie in this situation, she –"  
"Oh balderdash!" her mother cried out, shredding Jane's ear drums in the process. "A mother can always help! Don't you know how it cuts me right through my heart when she-"

Jane knew it inside out. Knew about every ounce of guilt her mother could inflict upon her with a glance or a word. They tasted bitter. Like cheap, dark chocolate.

"Mum," she tried interrupting her while walking up and down the hallway. Anne and Wentworth's discussion had erupted into a full blown shouting match and it was hard to understand a word with all that noise around her. "Mum, I think it would upset Lizzie too much if you came to London, too."

"Why for heaven's sake should it upset her? I'm her mother! She needs me!" Jane resisted the urge to tell her that Lizzie hadn't needed her in years, that she didn't need her now but that Jane was clinging too desperately at the few things she'd left from her sister to let go now.

"Mum, Lizzie is not here," she tried again.

"What do you mean, Jane? Of course she's there! You're with her, aren't you?"

"Yes," Jane said slowly. "She's here, Mum. But she's not… _present_."

"I don't understand what you mean, Jane!" Her mother sounded disturbed and Jane tasted bitterness on the back of her tongue. She swallowed.

"Do you remember Christmas, Mum?" she asked with a strained voice. "How she sat at the dinner table for two hours doing nothing but sipping at her wine and smiling enigmatically?"

"She didn't want to eat anything," her mother said slowly in a volume that didn't threaten any ear drums in the vicinity. "I tried persuading her, told her that she was too thin, but she… she didn't even react."

"It's worse this time," Jane explained quietly, pulling her cashmere jumper tighter around her. One had the impression of constantly freezing these days even though the apartment was heated and full of people. "It's like the first time… after she came back from the hospital and locked herself in her room…"

"But, Jane…," her mother whispered and Jane thought that Lizzie had it easy. She'd just burned down every bridge and turned everything into ash that she hadn't been able to carry. She'd never tried to endure, to bear situations. She'd never tried keeping her whole family together and from falling apart all by herself.

Lizzie had never needed to be perfect.

"I just think it's not a good idea for you to come around right now, Mum," Jane tried soothing her. "There are a lot of people here and I don't know where you could sleep and –"

"But you got that apartment from that charming Bingley fellow, my darling, surely I could-"

"I don't own that apartment, Mum," Jane bit out. She had no intention of ever setting foot into those damn rooms again. All she'd see were empty walls after all.

"But you could have!" her mother started the old tirade again and Jane blinked back tears.

"Hello, Mrs Bennet?" Suddenly the phone was ripped out of her hands and she could only watch as one of the Groveland-girls – the red haired one – took over the conversation with a glint in her eyes while her twin stood next to her with a wide grin on her face. "This is Lou Groveland. I'm a friend of Lizzie's and I just wanted to assure you that we have everything under control. Yes, yes… No, she's fine, believe me. She just has these… _days_ from time to time, but it's not something a few decent meals couldn't – No, you really don't need to come down. I think Jane is just a bit overwhelmed at the moment because she's never witnessed one of these episodes before and – Yes, I think she's just exhausted…" Here the redhead grinned at her and stuck out her tongue. "You know your daughter, she tends to overwork herself so easily… Yes, my sister and I will care for her… Really, don't you worry, Ma'am. Why don't you just lean back and drink a nice, hot cup of tea? I head they're showing the new season of '_Downton Abbey_' this weekend… Yes, really, three or four episodes an evening, I think… Aren't you shipping Mary and Matthew, too? Yes, it's time for them, I think so, too…" The girl nodded exaggeratedly and rolled her eyes at her sister who sniggered quietly.

"Fine, Mrs Bennet, I have to go now… Yes, surely, I'll call again soon… Oh, thank you very much, that's so nice of you… No, really I have to go now. See you soon, Mrs Bennet." She shut the phone and looked at Jane with one arched eyebrow. "In Kindergarten you were probably the first one to break down crying and confessing at one look of the pre-school teacher, weren't you?"

Jane just gaped at her. "Pardon me?"

The girl – cat-like, green eyes, high collared shirt and high waist jeans – rolled her eyes and shot a glance at her sister. "We'll have to teach you how to lie, hmm?"

Jane blinked. "I don't think that's necessary."

"I think it's very necessary."

"-I really should look after Lizzie –"

"She's fine, princess. Lizzie is in la-la-land, besides Anne she doesn't notice anyone."

"-can't leave her alone just like that. I'm her family, she-"

"We're all her family," the other one with the blond corkscrew curls chimed in, a fierce expression on her face. Jane gulped.

"Exactly," the redhead said, dragging Jane down the hallway to the wardrobe. "And because we're all family, I dearly need some time out now." She shuddered. "Being in a room with Anne and Wentworth for longer than ten minutes at a time makes me want to tear my hair out by the roots. All these longing glances are going to kill me one day." She nodded over to the kitchen. The door was open and Jane could see Anne and Wentworth standing there, the latter holding the other woman while she seemed to cry.

The screaming had stopped.

"Perhaps we should lock them in a broom closet when this ceasefire doesn't work?" the blonde one suggested while the other was dressing Jane in her coat as if she as six and not six and twenty.

"Nah, Anne would just be super polite all the time and talk about the weather which would frustrate Wentworth after a dozen cryptic remarks so much that she'd say something stupid which Anne would then take as proof that Wentworth still hates her. And then the whole drama would start again from the beginning," the redhead replied, wrapping a long, patterned scarf around Jane's neck that Jane was pretty sure wasn't hers and nearly choked in the process.

"Before I forget it: The rule is: surprise, downplay and distraction, understood?" Jane simply nodded in confusion at the sight of the fierce expression on the redhead's face. "Those are the three most important aspects when it comes to dealing with overbearing mothers. If you can weave in some compliments, all the better."

"Why are you telling her this now?" the blonde asked, pushing her curls under a blue, brimmed hat.

"Because we're going to Benwick," her sister explained, hands pressed against both sides of Jane's face. "We're going to visit my boyfriend," she said slowly. "He owns a bar close to Leicester Square – you like Tequila, don't you? – and we'll teach you how to lie. And one or two things about being young."

"Don't be scared by Benwick's tattoos," the blonde one advised her while they both dragged her downstairs. "And his piercings –"

"Nah, the really disturbing ones are at relatively inaccessible places," the redhead said smugly while she put on a pair of oversized sunglasses and held her face into the pale spring light.

Jane could only splutter.

Day 7

"You vile, little cockroach! How do you dare showing up here? Now? Right now? Don't you have any decency you disgusting son of a bitch? Did the cocaine blast away even the last of your brain cells?"

Lizzie screamed.

That were the two words running through Jane's mind while she watched her sister go berserk on an unfamiliar boy with dark blonde hair with her youngest sister standing next to them, dishevelled and uncoordinated, blinking into the distance with glazed eyes.

"You lying, two-faced snake!" She held a hockey stick in her hand and swung it threateningly in his direction. A hysterical laugh died in Jane's throat, because even though the situation bore a strange kind of hilarity, the wild, nearly inhuman expression in Lizzie's eyes was more than terrifying.

Anne had warned her.

"She lost it when Craig's parents turned up to transfer his corpse back to Ireland," she'd said quietly, head bowed, her hands occupied with chopping vegetables in barely identifiable pieces. "She screamed and cursed bloody murder and frightened them so much that they fled as if they'd seen the devil himself." The woman with the strange eyes had shaken her head then and had quietly added that she couldn't fault her for it. "We were lucky that Craig's will turned up shortly after, making it pretty clear that he wished to be buried in London, otherwise…" She hadn't finished her sentence and Jane had fled back to Lizzie's room shortly after only to watch her sister fill page upon page with unreadable words.

"I know what you did, you miserable, little ferret!" She underlined each word with a swing of the hockey stick that came dangerously close to his nose and genitals one or two times while the boy backed away and down the stairs with raised hands.

"Septimus, believe me it's not like you –"

"What?" She tilted her head to the side, baring her teeth in the farce of a smile and slowly lifted the stick in her hand. "Do you want to tell me you didn't seduce a sixteen year old girl? That you didn't whisper sweet nothings in her ear so that she'd put some money in your pockets for your efforts? No?" She came even closer and Jane shot helpless glances at the other people, but Anne had simply crossed her arms in front of her chest, a hard, unrelenting expression on her face and the twins seemed to find the proceedings more amusing than frightening.

Jane didn't know how they got to this. Lizzie had been in her usual catatonic, zombie-state until Lydia and her companion had shown up around noon with the intention of entering the apartment. The same apartment Anne and Charlotte had thrown them out of two weeks ago with reference to the lease contract when Craig's rooms had been locked up and it had gone downhill from there.

"Men love calling women sluts. Isn't that right? Self-righteous, patronising little pricks don't even notice they're doing it. But do you know what, George Wickham? Do you know the name for what you _so_ like to do? The little game you played with Giana? Do you know what one could call you for that?" Lizzie had come closer, had cornered him with the hockey stick and her slim body. She was two heads shorter than him, but the way she moved, the expression on her face was close to being murderous and Jane saw Wickham-boy's eyes flickering to the left and right searching for an escape route.

There was none. And judging from Lizzie's sugary sweet smile, she was fully aware of that fact.

"_Whore_," she then said. "It's not a word if you can't use it for both genders, don't you think? And you do it so well, Georgie-lee. Isn't that true? You do it _so well_..."

"Bitch," the cornered Wickham hissed, his face scarlet red from suppressed fury and humiliation. "I knew that you had a screw or two loose, you mad woman, but this-"

The stick hailed down with the velocity of a rifle bullet and hit him right between his legs. The resulting scream was high pitched and threatened to tear apart Jane's ear drums, but Lizzie just pursed her lips and shook her head while the boy sank down onto the floor.

"Tut, tut, Wickie-lee," she scolded him and lifted his chin with the stick's end while Wickham clutched his crotch with both hands and breathed heavily, his face distorted with pain. "Don't be so rude. Where are your manners? We were just talking about your favourite hobby…"

The boy groaned and opened his legs a bit to relieve the pain.

"That's a good boy," Lizzie praised him. "Spread your legs, lay on your back… I'm just wondering for how much you do it, hmm? Ten, twenty pounds? A blow-job for the cigarette in between? Tell me, do your mates know about that little business strategy?"

An angry growl was the only answer and Lizzie arched both eyebrows. "They don't?" she asked, surprised. "And I thought they were so interested in all possible ways of earning money. No matter the costs."

Something dark, even more dangerous crossed her face for a second and Jane's gaze went back to Anne, too shocked by the scene in front of her to do anything, but the woman was busy keeping the other tenants from intervening. Whatever she told them seemed to convince people, because instead of calling the police, they simply watched on with an expression of grim satisfaction on their faces.

"You could be their little slut, you know? They could rent you out, as a distraction, as a little bonus… You do it so well, don't you, Wickie-lee? So _well_…"

Had he been able to move, he probably would've broken her neck for that, but with the way things were, he was reduced to glowering and jerking back every time the hockey stick came too close.

"But that's not everything you've done, is it, Georgie?" Lizzie said conversationally and changed the hand holding the stick. "No, you like filling yourself up with stuff, don't you? A bit of cocaine, a bit of weed… just a little bender to round things up… Isn't that your favourite state?"

"You should know, right?" Wickham coughed, a small, mean grin on his lips. "What with how your little friend always begged me for junk like the little poof he-"

This time Lizzie didn't even bother using the hockey stick, instead she drilled the heel of her combat boots into the soft spot above his left knee and smiled in satisfaction when he howled with pain.

"You killed him," she whispered, the same foot now pressed against his throat. "You gave him the knife, the bullets, the gun. I don't care whether or not you were there for the final blow, but you'll all go to hell for it." A cold smiled spread on her face. "And you're the first one, Wickham. I thought I made it clear that Craig was off limits. No drugs, no insults for him. Was the blue colour not enough of a warning? Did you really want a repetition of what happened three years ago when the colour cartridges exploded in your stocks? You were broke for months, isn't that true? So close to being… _eviscerated_ by your suppliers."

Wickham's breath speeded up, was hectic and shallow and it looked like his eyes were nearly springing out of their sockets.

"The others learned their lessons," Lizzie said conversationally. "They only needed a slap on their fingers from time to time and they'd behave. Until you showed up…" She pressed her foot down on his throat and he panted.

"Tell me, was it wounded vanity? Because I wouldn't go out with you? Or an attempt at revenge when you saw me with Darcy and in your pathetic, pea-sized brain thought you could get back at him through me?" She looked down at him with contempt and shivers ran down Jane's spine. "Keep playing with your cars and dolls, puppy and try not to play with those who have more than three brain cells."

"I could sue you for this!" Wickham choked out as if to prove the disastrous state of his brain.

"For what, Wickham? Our little conversation?" She made a surprised face. "There are about twenty people who will all testify that we just had a friendly chat. Oh and how unfortunately you fell down the stairs afterwards!" She pressed her hand against her mouth in mock sympathy and it was this calculating show that froze Jane on the spot and she didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. "But that's what happens in old buildings, right?" Wickham just ground his teeth. "Not to mention the fact that our dear Darcy still has a bone to pick with you. Do you really want to give him the chance? Considering that our lovely, little chat was about his dear, dear sister…" She widened her eyes. "Such a pretty thing like you in prison… Well, I think you'll at least be able to indulge in your favourite pastime, won't you?"

She leaned down and barely audible, just there for Jane's ears, she whispered something. "If all these people weren't here…" She left the rest of the sentence hanging. "Some call me a murderer, you know? Dumb, dumb people don't understand what they mean by that… But you do, don't you, Wickham? Tell me, does the thought keep you awake at night? Do you remember her face just seconds before you crashed into her car? She was four months along, you vermin… depending on definitions that are one or two lives… Do you dream of them? Every night… the flash of light, her face before the crash… Do you see her? Do you need the drugs to forget?"

He'd grown pale, that boy, his eyes wide, his breathing shallow. "I hope you do," Lizzie said coldly. "Because one day that junk will kill you, slowly and painfully in some dirty toilet cabin, some alleyway behind the garbage bins." She stood up. "That's the only reason why I don't do it now." She pressed her heel against his nose, reached back and tramped down. He screamed, she smiled and blood coloured the yellowish tiles of the landing red. "Because I want to see you suffer, _day_ for _day_ for _day_." She underlined each word with a grinding of her foot and the scrunching sound of broken bones was revolting.

"That's revenge."

And she left him there, bleeding and on the floor.

Day 8

"And then she broke his nose! Pow… a-and crack and… a-and…and then there was so much blood…" Jane gesticulated wildly with her hands to make this flood of blood somehow understandable for her companion while her head bobbed back and forth. "Did you know people could have so much blood in their noses? And it… it drip-drip-dripped everywhere… Can you imagine?"

"Blood?" The man opposite her looked up from where he was busy drying glasses and quirked his lips into a slightly ironic smile. "I'm working in a bar - what do you think?"

"But so much?" She stared at the line of shot glasses with wide, glazed eyes. "I'm a primary school teacher," she then said. "I'm not supposed to _see_ blood. When more than a scraped knee happens, Ofsted's on our doorstep." She held out her hand. "Another one please."

"I think you had enough, princess," the barkeeper – Benwick was his name – said. He was the redheaded twin's boyfriend and everything her mother had ever warned her about.

He wore leather trousers and had _tattoos_.

"I haven't," she objected sullenly and thrust her bottom lip forward. "The last time I saw so much blood, I met my ex-fiancée at the hospital." She frowned. "Or something like that."

"Lovesick?" Benwick asked and leaned forward. His wavy hair reached his chin and she wanted to tug on it. Lou and Hetty had dragged her here after her Mum's phone call and explained in which order one used salt, limes and alcohol to turn tequila into an evening entertainment. Benwick had been there, the embodiment of everything her mother had ever warned her about and he'd been nice to her, just like Lou and Hetty he hadn't treated her like the villain of the story, the White Witch of Narnia – that was one of the reasons why she'd returned this evening to the bar, the other one was that she very, very urgently needed to very, very quickly get very, very drunk.

She snorted. "Hardly likely. He's an arse." A giggle broke through her throat. "A-a-arsehole." She giggled again. "Such a bad word, I must not say it. Such a naughty, naughty word… Don't tell my Mummy, yes? She'll only be upset and then she needs her smelling salts." Jane grimaced. "I don't like smelling salts."

"Few do, I think," Benwick replied amusedly. "And trust me, I won't tell your mother. Generally, they don't tend to like me."

"Ah…" She sighed. "The tattoos."

"What do you have to say against my tattoos?"

"Me? Nothing! Pretty, pretty, little tattoos." She traced the lines on his forearm with one finger and giggled like a little child. "They're just bad. Only bad men have tattoos. Mum says, we should never bring someone with tattoos home – they don't make for good husbands, she says."

"How boring," her companion commented with a grin and she nodded.

"Boring… Yes, exactly. Charlie didn't have tattoos. He was perfect, even Mum said that. A good… a good man and I… I tried so hard to be good, to be good for the good man… Didn't work out in the end." She sighed. "Wasn't good enough for the good man."

"Really?" Benwick had raised both eyebrows and stared at her now with a mixture of mischief and determination. "The sex with that good, good man… wasn't it also very, very… _boring_?"

She burst out laughing and only Benwick's hand on her shoulder kept her from falling into her line of empty shot glasses. "Boring," she panted, her pale blond, long hair flying wildly around her head. "So… so boring."

"I knew it."  
"Yes…," Jane muttered and something in her face fell. "But… but I loved the prat, you know?"

"And he's an arsehole," Benwick said. "Princess, don't you think you've had a bit too much-"

"Did you ever need to be perfect?" she interrupted him, a lost expression in her cornflower blue eyes.

"I was in the Army, darling. I've been perfect until the day I realised I'm not made for obeying other people's orders. It was quite… enlightening."

"I believe you…," Jane mumbled, her head lolling about until it rested on her outstretched arm. "S'is exhausting… always smiling, always being pretty…"

"Exactly and as much as I welcome your post-adolescent rebellion, princess, it's getting late and it's time for you to go back to your castle and sleep of that inebriation. Really, Lou should have never introduced you to tequila…"

"I like tequila," Jane mumbled, trying to lick the last drops out of one of the glasses. "Tastes good. Better than champagne." She grimaced. "Champagne is disgusting_. Dis-gus-ting_. Like sparkling water but bitter. Who wants to drink that? People only burp because of it."

"And throw up because of this," the barkeeper retorted, wiping some errant drops from her nose. "Not exactly dignified."

"Nothing's dignified. Nothing. Being dumped by one's fiancée with nothing more than a letter isn't dignified. Living with one's parents at twenty-six isn't dignified. Not being able to talk to one's own sister isn't… dignified."

"Looks like you're a bit obsessed with the word, hmm?"

"She's a zombie," Jane bit out instead of answering. "A bloodsucking, violent zombie."

"Do you also want to put her down like a mad dog because she's got rabies?" Benwick mocked her, his piercings in lips, nose and eyebrows gleamed in the yellowish light of the bar and Jane wanted to touch and play with them. They were fascinating.  
"Zombie", she still mumbled. "She frightens me."

Benwick sighed. "Let's walk through it again. Your sister is in an extreme situation and grieves because one of her best friends committed suicide. She sees someone she blames for that and who also has some other skeletons in his closet or walk-in-wardrobe or whatever and loses her shit…" He shrugged. "Sounds quite logical to me."

"You didn't hear her," Jane protested, her eyelids fluttering and threatening to fall shut. "She was so… so _cold_."

"Well, it's only just March…," the barkeeper remarked lightly and laughed when Jane turned to glare at him even though the effect was drastically minimised by her dropping eyelids. "Princess, why don't you just talk to her?"

"Because she doesn't _speak_," Jane grumbled. "She just sits there and writes or beats up guys two heads taller and two times bigger than her and… and when not, then… then Anne's there and Anne's perfect and she's Lizzie's sister and she's also _bloody damn nice_, blast it all!"

"I take it you don't like her?"

"Oh, I'd like her alright," Jane mumbled, licking another drop of tequila from the tips of her fingers, "if she didn't try to steal my sister."

Benwick took the empty glasses away and she pouted. "Pray tell, princess, how many sisters do you have?"

"Four." She held up four fingers like a pre-school kid and shoved them under his nose, nearly poking an eye out with a nail.

"And do you also know how many Anne has?"

Jane snorted. "Many. _So_ many. She steals sisters."

"One," Benwick said and Jane looked up. "She has exactly one and that's Lizzie. Have you ever thought that perhaps it's Anne who needs a sister? Not to mention the fact that people are not possessions and can't therefore be owned."

"She still doesn't talk to me," Jane whispered quietly, her voice a bit hoarse.

"Then perhaps you should talk to her," Benwick said with a shake of his head. "I'll get you a taxi now, princess. It's time for you to go back to your ivory tower."

Day 9

"You lying piece of scum!" Jane Bennet yelled the next morning and threw another stack of plates through the open window and her missiles missed their target only by inches before they shattered on the hard asphalt.

She was more than aware of the irony of the situation – having whined about Lizzie's aggression the evening before, she now took her as a role model and assembled every last shred of absolute fury a broken heart just so tends to go with and focused it on improving her aim.

She'd just wanted to get some coffee.

"Jane, darling!" Charlie called out, hands held protectively over his head while he tried to evade the multiple shards. "I'm so sorry, please can you-"

_Pow_, the next plate crashed down onto the pavement and judging from his scream, some shards hit their target.

"Stick your bloody excuses somewhere the sun doesn't shine!" Jane shouted back, cruder than was her usual custom, but she was tired and hungover and didn't want to see him, not now, not ever again, had no patience to glue herself back together yet again and she'd _just wanted to get some coffee. _

"Janie, please, Richard told me what happened and I just wanted to check whether."

"What? Whether everything's alright? It's fine. Everything's just _bloody fine_!" She emptied a bucket full of water over him as if to stress her point and saw with satisfaction how the water drenched his Ralph Lauren Jeans and expensive shoes. "It's been just fine for four months now," another plate with Peter, the rabbit on the front followed the water down, "so don't act as if you're suddenly so concerned if you couldn't be bothered to leave more than a bloody note when you left."  
"I didn't want to, but Darcy…," Charlie cried out from down below while he danced to evade the missiles.

"If you friend had just waited two minutes longer, he would have seen me breaking that idiot's hand!" she cried out with angrily burning tears in her eyes and threw a cactus down on the street. He tried to catch it, but the stings pierced the skin of his fingers and he let the plant drop with a barely muffled curse.

"I'm sorry, Janie, I… I'm really bloody-"

"Just go!" she yelled and noticed to her horror that her voice was breaking and her throat constricting.

"Janie…"

"Just _go_", she bit out and threw a half full glass of water at him. Her hands were trembling and she wrapped her jumper tighter around her.

"Janie, please, I just want to talk with-"  
"Hey, fuckface," another voice sounded directly behind Jane and then Lou was there, red hair piled messily on top of her head, but the expression in her eyes was hard. "She told you to go, are you fucking deaf or something?"

"I just want to-" Charlie protested, but he didn't finish the sentence, because he was hit by an overripe, slightly rotten tomato right in the face.

"I don't think you listened closely enough, you tosser!" Lou shouted with a broad smile on her face, a bowl of tomatoes in her hand that Sophie had sorted out the previous day. "You're supposed to disappear." Another tomato hailed down on him and hit his arm this time. Charlie was still busy spitting out tomato juice and wiping the whole mess from his face to register the hit with more than a muffled "Humph" while Jane did all she could to hold back the hysteric laughter bubbling up inside her.

"We're allowed to throw food?" Hetty cried out, having bounced into the kitchen with an equally broad grin and reached for a tomato.

"Take this!" she yelled and Charlie could barely escape the next load.

"Jane!" he called out. "Can we please talk about this? I miss you and-"

Something broke inside Jane at those words and she felt the fury flare up again. He had no right – absolutely no right – to say this. Not after all these months, not after Christmas. He'd left, just left like that as if it was nothing – as if they'd been nothing. Just a game, a nice little pastime. Look here? That was once a heart, a thousand little pieces and a bit of glue and let's see how well you can put it all back together.

She snagged a tomato and then another and threw them at him with flash speed, hit his chest, hit a knee. She bared her teeth. "Scumbag," she hissed with the memory in her head of her quitting her job more or less professionally, of buying expensive French food to celebrate and then finding the apartment empty.

Charlie seemed to pale when he saw her face. He opened his mouth, one, two times and something in his face seemed to crumble.

"I'm staying in London," he then said. "In our apartment. Please, Jane…I want… I just want to talk."

"Go away!" she screamed, reaching for the last tomato just when Hetty dragged the canister with the stale Sangria out of the fridge and emptied it over Charlie's head with a nearly diabolic smile. "Just bloody go away!"

They threw fruits and the random plate at him until Charlie was out of the line of fire and then they collapsed in a laughing heap on the kitchen floor. Jane wiped tears from her eyes and let herself be dragged into an embrace by Lou and Hetty. Her voice was shaky and she wasn't sure whether she was laughing or crying, but that didn't matter, it felt so good, burned just a bit, flew just a bit and –

"I think that was a bit overdue, hmm?" Lou asked, patting Jane on the back.

Day 11

It was dark when she walked into Lizzie's room.

She knew that after Craig's apartment had been locked up that Anne and the Grovelands had tried putting her into Anne's apartment or the family's home in the suburbs, but Lizzie had silently refused and her room had been the only compromise they had been able to make.

It was rather sparsely furnished.

There was a desk, a wardrobe and a bed in the middle of the room with a white canopy draped softly over the bedposts. Jane tried to remember what the room had looked like in previous years, whether the sparse décor could be attributed to Lydia's and Wickham's stay here.

She didn't know.

Lizzie was laying in the middle of the bed, her dark hair a shock against the white of the sheets and even in her sleep there was an expression of defiant determination in her features that looked haunted these days.

She slept restlessly.

Jane tried to be quiet and she padded slowly on socked feet closer to the bed. She could see Lizzie's pupils flickering back and forth under her closed eyelids, how her hands jerked barely noticeably as if she was trying to reach for something and she raised a hand as if trying to smooth out the frown on her forehead, those sullen, pugnacious lines and it tore at her chest, tiny, tiny threads that were so easily and yet so impossibly to cut up.

"Lizzie," she whispered, the word barely more than breeze causing ripples in the thin panels of the canopy. Lizzie's eyelids fluttered, but she didn't wake up.

She'd always been so wild.

From the moment on she'd learned to walk her sister hadn't known fear and she'd been a rumpled sylvan spirit with dirty knees and sparkling eyes, making people laugh wherever she went. It had been a different laugh from the one she used these days. Sometimes in the past few years Lizzie had learned sarcasm, had turned the bitterness into something that one could taste in the air, metallic and biting.

But perhaps she'd just grown up.

She'd always been too much of a mother. Jane knew that. She'd tried to be what her mother hadn't been and somewhere in between new bonds had been forged and the caring, worrying, asking had become second nature. She'd never been able to stop.

"After you left… after the ball…" She felt the panic she'd experienced at that time rise again, the terrible, sinking feeling when she'd noticed the missing things and that returned now every time Lizzie simply forgot to call for a week or two and couldn't be contacted by phone. "I went to his house – to Matthew's house. I rang and smiled and when he came out, I punched him." She smiled, felt the satisfaction again. It had been good to hear the scrunching of bones, to smell the metallic scent of blood in the air.

"He hurt you so much, my sweet," she whispered. "I wanted him to feel just as much pain, wanted him to suffer."

She sank down on her knees beside the bed, pressed her forehead against the cool, white sheets as if praying for forgiveness. "I should've taken better care of you," she said quietly. "I should've have known something was wrong, I shouldn't have left." She bit her lips, tried to hold back the tears. "At Christmas… I… I just wanted to make up for it."

Her gaze fell on the journal lying on the floor next to the bed and she struggled with herself, but curiosity won out.

_Darcy_, the first page she opened started abruptly. _I was in the hospital today. We were in the A&amp;E and waited and I didn't even know what for. The walls were spinning and there were monsters in the corners and I think I screamed. My throat hurts._

_Darcy_, it started again a line below the last paragraph. _Darcy, they tell me he's dead. They tell me I've found him, but I can barely remember. My head is foggy and I'm trying to grasp a thought, but everything's happening so fast and I can barely follow along. They tell me he's dead, but that's not possible. _

Jane felt how her eyes started to burn and she tried to breathe. _Darcy_, the next line said again. _They don't let up on it, they insist that he's dead, but that's not possible. I saw him at the hospital. He stood next to the vending machine and smoked a cigarette. He smiled at me. I remember that. _

_I think I drowned again, _she wrote a few lines later. _The clock on my phone shifted a few hours and days and it is morning. I remember going to bed, but I'm not wearing pyjamas. It's difficult to concentrate, everything's numb and I'm strangely grateful for that – I believe I would just scream otherwise. _

_There are people around me, pale shadows and I cringe when they touch me, when their voices become too loud. _Jane, swallowed, felt her throat burn. _Anne is like narcotics. _

_The silence is well-known, _Jane read a few lines below when she was able to see again. _It's a barrier, a buffer and resistance. When I'm silent, time is standing still. You asked me once whether or not I like carousels – I hate them, they always make nauseous. _

The next few pages were more a kind of dialogue, an enumeration of references that had Jane caught somewhere between astonishment and jealousy – She hadn't know that Lizzie and Darcy had known each other so well and the twins' whispers, the barely concealed insinuations finally made sense.

_It makes me angry when I think about that day, angry that you cornered me that way. Not because of all the ridiculous things we argued about, but because I was - I was close, okay? If you'd just given me more time, if you'd just talked to me… But perhaps I should've done that, too._

The stammering made absolutely no and a lot of sense to Jane at the same time and her gaze flickered over to Lizzie's face. Cautiously, she brushed a sweaty stand of hair out of her face and held her breath, but Lizzie just frowned and stayed asleep.

Jane breathed out.

_They're moments when the silence gets quite thin. Moments when I blink and everything's clear – I know what happened then and I can't breathe, because – it was Craig, Craig's dead and he is – I could have prevented it. Didn't. Didn't make it. _

_It curls like a snake around my spine, slowly winding up and it bites my skull when I realize that he's gone, that he's not standing next to that vending machine smoking, that that was just imagination, residues from the junk inside my body, my brain. And with the pain comes panic and the sinking realisation that there's no Plan B, no double bottom and no safety net, because he's dead, because Craig's dead and everything…and everything…_

_Everything here reminds me of him. But I can't go, I'm in nimbus, limbus, in the in-between-and-not-quite-there. Purgatory and there's the wall of flames. There's an angel and a devil to both sides of the path. Tell me, who is who? The devil smiles and the angel smirks, one's eyes blaze red, the other's are fireworks (believe me, they're both evil). _

Jane frowned, thumbed through a few more pages only to find her own name between the smudged lines with a sudden flare up of panic. _Jane is here_, it said and the words next to it were crossed out. _I see her in my periphery, my beautiful, golden sister… She looks sad. I want to take her hand, but the voices are too loud; they scream, tear at my hair and I must not listen too closely, because when they don't scream, they whisper; gleeful and malicious, they whisper in my ear that it's my fault, that I could've prevented this. Their fingers scratch at my skin, sharp, oh so sharp nails and they whisper in the tears, like wind through the crevices of and old shack, rattling and howling and they love tearing and tugging at me, to pervert caresses with a macabre kind of devotion… _The next few lines were blurred and Jane could only make out a small fraction (_when lips kiss, their teeth bite_), but the rest of the page was unreadable.

_Darcy_, the next page began. Bold, strong letters that grew smaller with each following word. _I wrote these words to someone else for so long – had to write them to someone else. You can see it on the first pages. There'd been so many things left unsaid and they burned, oh how they burned, but there's just ash now, just pitiful, flying ash and –_

_There are things I have to tell you now – three word sentences – please, don't go, I'm so sorry, didn't mean it – rather common phrases, but they're three words, okay? Three words. _

_I wish I could speak. _

She remembered the only other time Lizzie had used these words. How she'd bounded over to her with a broad grin and sparkling eyes – really, she'd shone brighter than those billboards on Piccadilly Circus – and how the words had just so bubbled out of her. She'd been so young, Jane suddenly realised with growing horror. She'd laughed and talked about Matthew and her friends and she'd been so… so happy. The three words had been right there in her eyes.

It wasn't fair.

_I saw Wickham again_, the following page began. _He was in this house, wanted to get back into this apartment. The voices were screaming, they raged and clamoured, but I was louder. I was so angry, Darcy. Can you imagine? I tasted bile on my tongue and took Craig's old hockey stick and – I wanted him to bleed, I wanted him to writhe with pain, to beg and crawl on all fours like a dog. I had Craig in mind, you, me, even you sister who I've never met. I wanted him to suffer. _

_Perhaps I overdid it… Jane looks at me fearfully ever since that day I screamed and I look away – I don't want to see her judging me. _

A laugh broke out of Jane's throat, short and hard, when she thought about how she'd thrown plates at Charlie. "We're not so different, you and me," she whispered and turned the page. There were only three words left.

_You were right. _

Day 13

Lizzie blinked into the pale morning light, seeming to barely register her surroundings. She looked tired and had slung her oversized jumper tight around her body while her hands still clutched the tattered journal.

"All will be well," Jane whispered to her sister while fastening her seat belt. Mus stood by the door to the driver's seat, completely immersed in a serious discussion with Anne and the older twins while Sophie stowed away some provisions for the drive and tried to keep the younger twins from short-circuiting the car radio.

"I promise," she said quietly and brushed errant strands of hair out of Lizzie's face. Her sister didn't jerk back this time, but she also didn't show any signs that she'd registered the contact. Jane sighed, shot a glance at Anne who returned it, pale but determined and nodded. All she'd said when Jane had told her about her plan had been a sighed "Finally" before she'd hugged her.

"May I?" Jane asked Lizzie and when no reaction came, she simply took the book out of her hand to scribble some words under the "_You were right_" part. "I wish you all the best," she then said and kissed her cheek. "We'll see each other soon, my dear."

"Yes," Anne said who'd stepped near her and hugged Lizzie. "As soon as the defence of my doctoral thesis is over, I'm coming, okay?" She whispered some other things and Jane saw Lizzie nod quietly and clutch the journal.

"Do you think it's the right decision?" Jane asked quietly when they closed the door and Mus waved goodbye before starting the yellow transporter's engine.

"What did you write in her journal?" Anne said instead of answering.

Jane sighed, wrapping her arms around herself. It was too early for the pale spring sun to do more than tickling them. "Told her to talk to him."

Anne nodded. "Does Darcy know?"

"I called him. He's waiting for her."

"Good." There was so much relief and worry in that one word that Jane looked up. The other woman smiled.

"It's time, don't you think?"

And Jane just nodded while they watched the yellow car make its way through the busy street only to disappear around the corner.

On the way to Pemberley.

* * *

**A/N: So next time... Pemberley?  
**


	31. Chapter 30 The Light, the Light

**A/N: A Happy New Year! I'm going back to England tmrw so I finally got around to finishing this;) I think you'll like it although I again warn against potentially triggering content!**

**Soundtrack: ****An einem Morgen im April - Rosenstolz, Blaue Flecken - Rosenstolz, The River Lea - Adele, Stitches - Shawn Mendes **

**Disclaimer: Not mine**

* * *

**Chapter 30: The Light, the Light**

She woke up when the car entered the small path through the woods.

It was evening. Sunlight shone through leaves and danced in specks and patterns over asphalt, over yellow-painted metal and bitten fingers.

She felt herself nearing the water's surface, felt the pressure decrease and the water become warmer. There was light, refracting in the waves; voices and sounds that lured her out of the depths and if she looked down, she'd see the stones fall.

Someone cut the ropes.

As if gears would mesh, senses put themselves together, little pieces floating in the zero gravity of deep waters drift back towards each other and lungs snap into place trembling until…

_Ah…_

The first breath tasted like rain. Fresh air, damp earth and leaves. Someone had cranked down the window.

The second breath was coffee. Warm, aromatic… A glance to the front showed her the thermos flask and cup pushed into the holdfast of the console. Mus was singing loudly and horribly off-tune to the music – a nearly antique country pop song and something – the dull throbbing in her head – told her that the song had been played on repeat for hours.

She couldn't remember.

She frowned, bent one finger. The movements were stiff and strangely awkward yet so familiar as if someone had taken possession of her body in her absence. Her head was full of cotton wool and she gulped, swallowed down dusty dry words that had crawled up her throat and died there on her tongue.

Like flies on a window sill.

She reached for her mobile phone, somehow knowing that it was in the pocket of her jumper and could barely believe what the numbers on the screen showed her.

It was mid-March.

Her eyes grew round and wide when she tried counting back, tried recalling the latest date she remembered only to realise with sinking finality that she'd nearly spent three weeks in the ocean.

The half-choked sound she emitted seemed to have caught Mus' attention, because he blinked at the rear-view mirror and smiled at the sight of the alert, hastily flickering look in her eyes.

"Welcome back, princess," he greeted her and her eyes – green and wide and panicked – rested on him for a second. She opened her mouth but her throat was dust and she coughed.

"Where are we?" she then asked a bit hoarsely and the smile on Mus' face became – if possible – even wider.

"On the way to Pemberley," he announced and she was barely able to feel panicked at the thought.

"Why?" she asked, vague memories of dark rooms and screaming flickering before her eyes and she blinked them away.

"Country air," the small man on the driver's seat grumbled into his moustache. "You're way too pale, girl."

She nodded, surprised that the muscles in her neck prevented her head from falling down on her chest.

"Does he know?" she asked, her voice still rough and new. She bent her fingers, heard bones crack and let her thumb trace over her bitten nails.

"He's already waiting."

* * *

Lizzie blinked when they stopped in front of the manor and she opened her eyes.

It was so bright – the house in pastels, the glittering water of the lake, the light gravel of the courtyard – nearly blinding and disorientating in its intensity.

She blinked, shielded her eyes.

"Come on," Mus called out from his seat in the car and with a click of the door, a push and a stumble, Lizzie fell out of the car, her eyes half blind and directed at that dark spot on the staircase leading towards the entrance.

She felt her throat constrict. The closer she got, the more detailed the figure became and she felt her skin prickle again.

He smiled and she stood there, blinking, arms slung around her body and she wanted to cry, cry and scream and sling her arms around him… She couldn't.

She could not cry.

"Lizzie…," he said, dark, warm eyes looking at her with trepidation and confidence at the same time.

"Welcome to Pemberley."

* * *

When she woke up it was morning and a pair of icy blue eyes stared down at her menacingly.

"Good morning," Lizzie said after a good few minutes of silent staring, her voice rough from sleep and raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"_Meow_," the monstrosity of a grey fur ball said in response and raised its crumpled face in a gesture of condescending indignation without taking its eyes off of her.

"Did you sleep well?" Lizzie asked politely. The cat stood with all four paws on her chest and watched her out of impossibly blue eyes as if contemplating whether or not killing her was on the menu today.

"_Meow_."

* * *

The cat she'd named 'Her Majesty' in her head guided her with the same grumpy expression and feathery elegance through the long hallways and past gold globes and oversized portraits of people in clothes made in styles that changed over the decades they came from and Lizzie held up a steady stream of words in a more or less one-sided dialogue with Her Majesty to keep the panic at bay.

"Antoinette Pauline Darcy," one of the small gold plates next to the portrait read. "Looks like the Darcy's have a bit of a French ancestry, don't you think?"

"Meow."

"Distantly related, I take it? The shame of having French relatives in – what? 1812? - can't have been that easy to bear, hmm?"

Her Majesty just snorted and disappeared around the corner.

"But that raises a lot of questions!" Lizzie cried out and hurried after her. This house was a maze surpassing even Rosings in terms of complexity. "How much French blood does run in the veins of the current Darcys, Her Majesty? Because until now I was convinced that it is blue and of cool, English quality. You know what I mean-", she pointed at her face, "- the mask and all that."

"_Meow_…"

"Yes, I know. Don't look at me like that! I'll stop teasing now, but really… Being nice is _quite_ difficult. I don't know how people manage to do that every day…"

"_Meow_…"

"And I promised… somehow," Lizzie whispered and ceased walking. Her Majesty turned around, a questioning look on her crumbled face and with a sigh she took a few steps closer to Lizzie and bumped her head against the girl's knees.

"Jane said I should go talk to him," Lizzie continued and bent down to pet the tattered, grey fur ball that was watching her with attentive, eerily blue eyes. "That it's time. Anne also said that a lot."

"_Meow_."

"Yes, I know. I'm acting like an idiot…" Lizzie sighed and straightened. "I mean, honestly, I'm talking to _cat_…"

Her Majesty snorted and with a swish of her tail she disappeared behind the open door.

"Are you sulking now? Is that why you're leaving me?" Lizzie called out, following the cat into the brightly lit room. "Oh come on! Only because I called you a _cat_? You can't do that to me, Her Majesty! Who else is going to guide me through the house and past all these portraits of obscure French relatives –"

"Antoinette was in fact Belgian. To be accurate she came from a lovely city called 'Namur'", a voice that was painfully, _painfully_ familiar replied instead of the whining "_Meow_" she'd expected.

"Oh," was all that came out of Lizzie's mouth and she stood there frozen, the last bit of colour drained from her face.

"Miss Bennet," Darcy said after a few breath intakes full of silence and smiled. He wore slacks and was – for some inexplicable reason – barefoot, but it was the shirt, the same pale grey, long-sleeved shirt that she remembered to be so warm and soft, that tempted her and she curled her hands into fists in order not to give in and run her fingers over it. "I see Mrs Reynolds has made your acquaintance already."

"Mrs Reynolds?" Lizzie asked confusedly and blinked.

"That grey ball of fur?" he asked with a smile that lit up the whole room. He appeared to be part of the building with its endless hallways and glowing rooms and he seemed to be so… relaxed that she very nearly didn't recognize him. "About this tall, consists mostly of grey wire wool, with only half of her whiskers intact and a face that looks like her best friend is a concrete wall?"

"Do you mean Her Majesty?" Lizzie asked back and blushed when he chuckled.

"Did she introduce herself to you like that?" She looked on fascinated when he leaned down to pet that grey monstrosity that was apparently known as Mrs Reynolds. The cat purred and snuggled up to him, the crooked face pulled into something akin to a smile.

"Can she talk then?"

The expression in his eyes became mocking. "As if she'd stay silent, Miss Bennet."

"Well, I can scarcely believe that she took on the name "Reynolds" without protest."

"_Mrs_ Reynolds, Miss Bennet. The title counts." The grey monster had transformed into a purring, cuddly pet and she was convinced that the look the cat directed at her was very nearly triumphal.

"Indeed? When was the wedding?" Lizzie asked and immediately wanted to bite her tongue. "I mean only because… usually one marries before…"

"…Before one gets the title?" He shook his head. "To my knowledge there is no Mr Reynolds, but", - and here he winked at her –, "who are we to tell her what she can and can't be called?"

Lizzie stared at him, completely flabbergasted to see a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Indeed…", she said slowly and blinked, rubbed her eyes, half convinced that she was still fast asleep or had pulled an Alice and admittedly followed the cat and not the rabbit down the rabbit hole.

His smile grew wider.

"You…" Her mouth popped open. "You're _playing_ with me!" A surprised laugh bubbled out of her throat. "You… and this cat… this house and _you_…" She took a step towards him and very nearly ran a finger over his face.

She held herself back just so.

"You're laughing," she then said, saw the gulp, a wavering second before his eyes started twinkling again.

"Caught that now, did you?" His fingers ruffled the cat's fur under Mrs Reynold's – Her Majesty's – chin and the fur ball started purring again.

"Quite difficult to overlook, don't you think?" She frowned. "Neon sign," she then said. "It's like a neon sign."

He looked at her blankly before the corners of his mouth started crinkling and a smile appeared on his face. "How interesting," he then said before turning around and wordlessly signalling her to sit down at the breakfast table. "And I thought it was the Aliens' doing. Vivisections and altered personalities and all that."

* * *

Life at Pemberley was strange.

Nearly everything was kept in light pastel colours. Shades of white and yellow with accents in gold and furniture crafted from dark, warm wood with red velvet covers created the impression one had permanently caught the sunlight in this building and had drowned it in it down to its basic structure.

She could taste it in the air.

It was peaceful. There were moments when she paused and it was quiet – absolutely quiet – and it was this eerie silence that marked the greatest difference. She'd lived in chaos for so long, in the _louder-faster-and-don't-you-dare-stop_ and even her own silence hadn't been quiet, had only been dull droning and for the first time in a long while she had the feeling of simply existing with sound body and mind.

But Pemberley wasn't just quiet and light and blinding colours. It was also faded footsteps behind closed doors, bread crumbs at the breakfast table and the shadow of someone she'd never even met in contrast to the ever present sunlight. Darcy tended to shake his head and roll his eyes whenever his sister came up in conversation. Giana was a ghost with traces, a Gretel in the woods that wanted to remain unfound and Lizzie had her hands full with one Darcy – _thankyouverymuch_ – she didn't have the nerves to set her wits to the other part of that particular gene pool.

She still wasn't quite at home in her body and moving felt like someone had taken apart every single joint in her body and put them back together after enough time in Nimbus.

It was confusing.

Quite nearly as confusing as a Darcy who crumbled his croissant into his coffee, loathed baked beans and bacon with a passion resembling a six year old's relationship with broccoli and so casually dropped sarcastic barbs about people and events in the paper that he barely noticed that he had Lizzie in stitches and choking on her toast.

A Darcy who watched her over the rim of his reading glasses while sitting in his chair in the library and kept a straight face while Her Majesty – Mrs Reynolds – who'd elected his shoulder to be the perfect resting place tried to snatch his glasses with one furry paw because she apparently thought they were a particular delicious mouse. A Darcy who'd apparently discovered something that distinctly looked like humour and was so at ease with it, the way he was at ease with this house as if someone had painted him into the scenery that Lizzie, one finger holding open the book in her lap, caught herself watching him and even if she wasn't yet ready to admit it, her mouth was smiling so widely it felt as if her face split in two.

It was confusing.

"I heard lobotomies are supposed to be quite painful," Lizzie Bennet remarked one morning at the breakfast table a few days after her arrival at Pemberley and frowned.

Darcy looked up. "Indeed," he said and poured some more coffee into his mug. The man had the habit of drowning his toast in his tea or coffee and licking his fingers clean afterwards and Lizzie hadn't decided yet whether or not she found that adorable or annoying. "And they have these nasty side effects that turn you either into the drivelling shadow of a human being or let you dance naked on cars like a drunken fool. Not to forget that the procedure hasn't been performed since the 1970s due to its barbaric nature." He blinked, stirring his coffee. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I kind of ruled out Aliens as a possibility," Lizzie said and tore her toast to bits. She tried offering some to Her Majesty, but the cat sitting enthroned on her velvet cushion and overlooking the whole table just crunched up her nose and turned her head to the side.

"Interesting," Darcy remarked. "May I ask what caused such a profound realisation? I thought that the NASA finding traces of water on Mars would only encourage you in the idea that they would soon find the rest of my family."

She glared at him playfully and he smiled while calmly stirring his coffee. "Do you have fun doing that?"

"What?" He blinked innocently. "Developing a sense of humour? I think it's in the nature of things." Darcy leaned in and his dark eyes lit up in the bright morning light. "Believe me, letting my heart grow two sizes wasn't as painful as they portrayed it in the film."

"I never compared you to the Grinch!" Lizzie grumbled and shoved torn apart pieces of toast in her mouth.

"Hardly," Darcy replied amusedly. "Considering that we unfortunately didn't spend the holidays in each other's company."

"Unfortunate indeed," Lizzie said and shuddered. "Better the Grinch at Christmas than a line-up of badly dressed up nightmares in a festive horror cabinet."

"Ah, believe me, you'd have loved calling me a Grinch," he brushed off her bout of bitterness. "You'd have made bets with Charlie and put me into horrible Christmas jumpers only to later post all the pictures on Facebook or something equally horrible."

Lizzie pouted. "You make it look like I constitute a public danger!"

"Didn't we already established that?" Darcy asked. The white light streaming in through the high windows of the dining room did strange things to his face, things that could take her breath away at the most inconvenient moments.

"Only because I went berserk on Wickham with a hockey stick doesn't mean I have aggression problems…"

"I distinctly remember some comments about ginger roots in various orifices…?"

She glared at him again and threw a piece of toast at his head which he caught quite easily.

"Aliens, Grinche and now ducks?" he asked and put the piece of toast in his mouth. "Ockham's razor, Miss Bennet. The easiest explanation is often the correct one."

"Darcy, the question is not whether or not you're human, but moreover what _kind_ of human you –"

"A duck-man?"

"Well, you're known for wearing ties with ducks printed on them…"

"One time, Miss Bennet. That does not constitute a representative sample. Also, Giana gave me that tie."

She laughed when she saw his expression. "The tie was very cute", she said. "But students – especially med students – are like sharks. They would've eaten you alive."

"Which implies that I would have let them eat me." Darcy raised an eyebrow. "Which I wouldn't have done and they wouldn't have liked to taste."

Now it was her turn to raise eyebrows.

"Alien, or did you forget?" Darcy pointed at himself and Lizzie could barely suppress her laughter.

She shook her head. "And that's my theory going for a burton." She waved after it through the window. "_Bye-Bye_ – it was nice meeting you!"

"Theory, Miss Bennet?" Darcy asked with an expression somewhere between suspicious and amused.

"Lobotomies," she said with a nod and poured some more milk in Her Majesty's bowl, which the grey monstrosity accepted with grace. "But judging from your still intact ability at self-irony, I'll have to discard that theory again."

"You need a licence for your theories, Miss Bennet," Darcy said with a shake of his head.

"Oh," she said. "I already thought I was a public safety hazard. Don't you think it's quite irresponsible to let me out on the street with a weapon?"

"Like the hockey stick?" He arched an eyebrow. "Not that I wasn't grateful to you for that, Miss Bennet-"

She sighed. "Lizzie."

"Pardon me?"

"Call me Lizzie. The constant "Miss Bennet" is starting to annoy me."

He laughed quietly. "And you say your preferences are not at all decided arbitrarily, hmm?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I'll show you 'arbitrarily'. Give me a hockey stick and we can find out right now."

Darcy's eyes lit up. "I can only offer you golf clubs… Lizzie."

She looked at him with a speculative look in her eyes. "That could work."

He laughed, stood up. "As if you're in need of weapons," he said quietly. "Wild, brilliant Lizzie Bennet. You only need to walk into a room with bare feet and that expression in your eyes and you're more terrifying than every hockey stick in your hands could ever be."

* * *

She stared at the piano standing in the morning room and didn't know what to say.

"I talked to my sister… about what you said at Lady Catherine's dinner", Darcy remarked quietly from behind her and walked past her towards the piano.

Lizzie blinked. "There's no lid," she commented on the obvious and frowned. "Why is there no lid?"

"Well, after talking to Giana-"

"Giana? Ghost-in-this-house Giana? Gretel-in-the-forest-without-Hansel Giana? _That_ Giana?"

Darcy let out a laugh, ran his finger over the polished wood of the piano that stood in front of those high windows, bathed in the morning sun's light.

"Can you repeat that?" he asked. "Perhaps she'll hear you and realise how utterly ridiculous her behaviour is." He rolled his eyes.

"_Darcy_…," Lizzie said quietly and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Why… why is there no piano lid?"

He brushed it off. "I was told that pieces of a piano as old as this one need to be restored regularly in order to prevent accidents that could seriously hurt the player's fingers", he said lightly. "To be perfectly honest, I like the way it looks now so much that I'm considering leaving it like this and keep the lid off completely." Darcy looked at her. "What do you think?"

She blinked, mouth half open. "Good," she said and her fingers trembled. "Da…Darcy?"

He looked at her, hummed some odd tune.

"Thank you."

* * *

On a morning in April Lizzie found him outside on the terrace.

It was a typical morning for Pemberley with a bright, beaming sun, an azure sky and the green of the surrounding hills and she'd grown used to this constant brightness of colours, but she still blinked when she stepped into the light and took a seat in the outside chair next to him.

"I've loved Matthew Cavanaugh since I was sixteen."

Those were the first words she uttered that morning and she spoke them without looking at him, simply blinked into the green widths of Derbyshire with a quietly growing understanding as to why someone would miss these vivid colours.

"He was my best friend's older brother. Florence and I… we'd been inseparable since we were babies. Meryton is not that big – there are a lot of old families of which the Bennets and Cavanaughs were the most… _prominent_ ones."

She pulled her knees to her chest, pressed her chin against the indentation. "He's always been there, you know? Ever since I can remember he's been there, radiant and larger than life and when we played Catch, he'd lead one team and Florence and I would lead the other. We were a bunch of wild kids whose kingdom was Morecambe Bay and who could smell snow before the clouds appeared. Even in school we were the 'Meryton Kids'. Those that took the train for the ten miles to school and existed in their own, separate group…" She sighed. "It's difficult explaining what it was like growing up in Meryton… a lot of freedom, a lot of isolation and the feeling of being something special created this overall feeling of… _uniqueness_. As if we were the centre of the world and nothing except us was important."

Darcy didn't say anything and Lizzie was grateful for that. "I had a crush on him since I was fourteen and I never thought that he… that he…" She faltered. "It was just a stupid crush. Florence and I would tag along whenever he and his friends went somewhere – the beach, the city – and they'd tease us and we'd giggle and laugh and… It changed when I turned sixteen. It changed that summer. The way he looked at me, what he said… as if he suddenly realised that I wasn't his pseudo-little-sister anymore, but a girl and I was… I was delighted." Lizzie broke out in choked laughter, tasted the salt. "I was so in love and he was this… this superhuman guy, beautiful and intelligent and everybody loved him, everybody wanted to be just like him and I was his little sister's best friend, member of the mathletes and in the incentive programme for science, the one with the wild hair and the talent to ride a bike while standing on the saddle, the best at cherry pit spitting… and he wanted me_. He wanted me._"

She was quiet for a moment and saw the corners of his mouth jerk up. "Why ever not," he said, his voice a soft rumble. "The best at cherry pit spitting… That sounds quite magnificent."

She laughed a nearly choked laugh and wiped her eyes. "Everyone was so ecstatic," she continued. "Florence because it meant that I was "really part of the family" now, my mother because the Cavanaughs were rich and important, my sisters and the rest of the village, my friends, even the teachers at school loved the idea of this beautiful couple. Fate, they'd say. You were meant to be. And I… I was in the middle of that fairy-tale where the prince carried my books and held my hand and kissed me that I didn't realise at first how a stupid crush first became whispered and then loudly spoken, three words and when I did… when I did these words suddenly meant more than just snogging and holding hands.

I was seventeen," she said and her eyes darkened. "It was shortly after my birthday – he gave me concert tickets and a locket on a chain and I wore it… I wore it every day."

Lizzie bit her lip, stared at the bright blue sky. "I wore it on the 15th of October, too. His father had pressured him again, about the future, university and all that… he was in a bad mood. I tried cheering him up, I… I teased him." She grew quiet. "I teased him for his funeral expression and told him to stop being so grumpy and he… he got angry, pushed me aside with more force than he probably intended to use, but it was enough to throw me over the coffee table and to cut open my cheek…" She ran her fingers over the skin and trembled slightly. "He was horrified," she continued. "He apologized immediately, went to get the first aid kit and wiped away the blood and I… I just sat there and watched him cry because he hurt me so and I couldn't… couldn't cry. After a while I didn't know anymore why he was begging and I wanted him to stop, to stop crying, to stop begging me to stay. After all, nothing happened."

Her voice was so low. "_Nothing_ happened."

For a while no one said anything. Darcy's face was a flawless example of calm and serenity and if it weren't for his white-knuckled fists, she'd have sworn her story barely touched him. Her fingers were trembling when she reached out a hand and slowly, so very slowly wrapped her fingers around his and squeezed.

"He was my first, you know? One of the first points on the long list of thing he took from me and probably the most irrelevant, but still… I'd been hesitant before. He never pressured me, but I always had the feeling it was something I had to do… and in that moment… in that moment I knew that I loved him and it was such an," she laughed, "such an incredibly bad moment to realise that because I no longer stood at the crossroad and could have chosen another way, No, I was already right in the middle and there were destroyed battle lines and moral advising one thing as well as another and then he was there and he loved me and I loved him." Lizzie shook her head. "Sometimes it felt like I never had a choice."

"That's… that's why you keep silent on October 15?" Darcy asked quietly, stroking the back of her hand with one finger.

"It's not keeping silent on purpose," Lizzie said. "Not voluntarily, not planned. I just _can't talk_." She gulped. "It just went on like that, lines blurred until I couldn't tell up from down, right from wrong and it… I still remember the burning, the unbearable heat and the sun glasses I wore for two weeks straight in January without anyone saying anything, because _no_ _one_ ever said anything. Jane was at University and came home very rarely, my sisters were too young and the one time I tentatively asked my mother, she just said that women's duty is to do anything to keep their men happy." Lizzie snorted. "That I had to do anything to keep Matthew happy."

"Sounds like she and my aunt were born in the same long forgotten century."

"Not only my mother," Lizzie said quietly. "Everyone, the whole village, the school… everyone was so in love with the idea of Matthew and me that they missed the important bits. We were the perfect couple – a Cavanaugh and a Bennet. The old ladies in the church choir very nearly fainted when they heard the news." She shook her head. "There was this exchange student for a year, Dave or Daniel or something. He spent a lot of time in the music department of our school and as your aunt told you, I very much like music…"

"I didn't need my aunt to tell me that," Darcy chuckled and Lizzie let out a soft laugh.

"She presented me as this child genius, a second Mozart or something," she brushed it off. "I think a lot of people exaggerated after hearing me play. I loved the piano, I was good at playing it, but I wasn't extraordinary or something-"

"Not extraordinary?" he asked and she heard the smile in his voice. "Lizzie and not extraordinary? Is that even possible?"

She squeezed his hand and chuckled.

"Matthew didn't like it," she continued quietly. "That I spent so much time with Dean – David – whatever his name was, was a thorn in his side. One day while playing the piano – it was at my home, my mother was in the kitchen, my father in the library and I was in the parlour at the piano, completely immersed in what I was trying to do - Matthew came in, excitedly telling me something or other and when I didn't react, because I didn't even hear him… he… he got _angry_."

Her voice was just a whisper. "Your sister was right, Darcy." She traced the faint lines on her knuckles with the tips of her fingers. "He was so unbelievably sorry. Afterwards. He was always sorry afterwards. And I screamed – we were both screaming – and when my mother burst into the room, wildly asking what in heaven's sake had happened, he babbled something about an accident and I just looked at him and didn't say anything."

Lizzie gulped, leant her head back and tried taking deep breaths.

"I became rebellious after that." Her head was light and she felt a bit dizzy. The last time she told that story was five years ago and she wasn't used to the words, not to the memories in that order. Darcy squeezed her hand, anchored her a bit more to this world.

"At the beginning it was just small things. The lipstick too dark for that time of day or that particular outfit, the dress too low-cut, the shoes too sturdy… Then for the Christmas Ball…," she laughed. "Dean or David suggested performing a song from a punk band and to kind of… _visualize_ it."

"Do I want to imagine that?" Darcy asked and she blushed. "Let me tell it like this," she said with a laugh. "The first lines of that song are pretty explicit and he performed it in front of the whole school and our families." She faltered. "Matthew didn't like it….

I felt like screaming all the time, you know? As if I was constantly begging for help and my vocal chords were sore and my head droned and at the same time I kept my mouth shut and smiled widely while I burned and learned how to apply make-up and concealer so that people wouldn't see the bruises. He started planning our whole future, where and what we were going to study, where we were going to live, when we were getting married and have children and I felt like choking… He got sad when I didn't agree with his plans and then I felt guilty and after a while I just gave up. I got quieter and quieter…" A shake of her head. "And then Jane came home. She studied at the University of Manchester and came home for the summer break. I think she was vaguely concerned before and when she arrived it didn't take her long to go from slight worry to absolute panic." She laughed that half choked laugh again and Darcy squeezed her hand a bit tighter. "Jane… She took me aside and I didn't want to hear it at first – it just couldn't be – but she was determined and somewhere inside I was just so relieved that there still was someone who gave a damn and drew the lines again, knowing that sun glasses in January were not at all funny, but fucking worrisome and I sat frozen in that car while she told Matthew to keep the bloody hell away from me, that he'll never, ever lay a finger on me again and while he pounded his fists against the car window and begged me to come out, she put her foot down and drove away with squealing tyres. Believe me, she was terrifying that day."

Darcy didn't say anything.

"Our home was pure chaos when my mother heard the news, the village was the same - goodness, they even prayed in church for us to get back together – and I locked myself in Jane's room and I was… _relieved_, but also confused and disoriented and I barely took notice of the mess around me. But then…" Lizzie paused. "Jane has always been very pragmatic," she then said. "When Matthew and I got together she took me to the doctor despite my mother's protests to get a prescription for the pill." She closed her eyes. "Jane discovered that the last ration only consisted of plain Tic Tacs. I'd swallowed them so quickly that I didn't notice."

"Did Cavanaugh…?" Darcy's voice was controlled, but she heard the fury.

"No," Lizzie said quietly, holding his hand tighter. "My mother."

"Your-"

"Yes." She shrugged. "She tried the same thing with Jane and Charlie." A frown. "Whatever Jane's faults may be – and believe me I know she's not perfect – she's a good person. She never would've conceded to that."

"I never doubted that."

Lizzie nodded sharply. "When the doctor confirmed what the tests had shown before…" She swallowed. "I told him, you know? I didn't want to go back, but I thought it was only fair that he knew even if I had no clue whether or not I wanted to keep the child. I was only seventeen, Darcy. I was a mere child myself!

Matthew was ecstatic," she continued and bitterness creeped into her voice. "He thought a baby meant getting back together, that even though his plans had been turned upside down we belonged together and he was…" She faltered. "He was devastated when I refused. He grabbed me, held my arms so tight it hurt and… Perhaps it was Jane," Lizzie whispered. "Perhaps because of the baby, but it was like that scene at the beginning – my cut up cheek and he at my feet – and I loved him still, but this time it was different. The lines were clear and where before I hadn't had a choice but to stay, I then didn't see any other possibility but to go.

And it didn't make any sense that it hurt, that it felt like I was tearing out my own heart and it didn't help that he disregarded Jane's warnings at every turn. He came to my home and my mother received him like a second Messiah and I locked myself in my room, clamped my ears shut while he sat at the other side of the door and talked to me. His words were _poison_," she hissed, clawing one hand into her knee, pressed her nails against the fabric of her jeans. "Slow acting and deadly. He followed me at school and everyone – Florence and my teachers, even random people on the street tried talking me into ending that poor boy's misery. A summer wedding, they said. How wonderful that would be. He told everyone we were engaged, showed everyone the ring and everything and I…

Perhaps it was the stress," she whispered. "Perhaps because I didn't sleep, because I barely ate… I don't know and the doctors couldn't tell me either. I lost the baby I never chose as if it was karma, the last tragic act in that farce of a play and I… I saw things while lying in that bed – beautiful, _terrible_ things and when I woke up, I wasn't the same person anymore."

She fought for air, felt the panic creeping up, saw the small boy with the blond hair playing at the foot of her bed again and her body reared up.

"_Shhh_…," Darcy whispered, turning his hand around in hers in order to be the one holding her now, did it cautiously to avoid touching her wrists and he ran his fingers over the back of her palm until her breathing evened out and her eyes consisted more of green than white.

"Thank you," she whispered and for a long while they just sat there in silence.

"They didn't believe me, you know? Not Matthew, not my parents, Florence or the rest of the school… Only Jane stayed loyal and what had been the tear-jerking interlude of this century's romance evolved into a full blown witch hunt. _Murderer_, people in the streets, in the hallways of the school hissed, even in church they gave a sermon about the crime of abortion. They spit at me, you know? And Matthew… he used it like leverage, like a means of negotiation. A short scandal that would quickly turn into a tragedy if I came back to him. The Cavanaughs had so much power in the village and my father… he was…," she frowned, "…amusedly disinterested. He saw no point in intervening. Stupid people will always gossip about someone, he said when I begged him to make the Cavanaughs stop. It was on me now to provide this season's entertainment, he said. Then he sipped on his whiskey and thumbed through his book.

He didn't just take myself from me, you know? He took _everything_. My baby, my family, my best friend. Even the village I grew up in didn't belong to me anymore. He was everything. _Everything_."

A defiant look crossed her face. "There is this poem by Kim Addonizio titled '_What do Women Want_' and it's about this red dress the lyrical I wants to wear, flimsy and cheap, sleeveless and backless to show how less she cares about other people's opinion of her. A dress as a provocation and it ends with her saying that she'll wear this dress like bones, like skin and that it'll be the goddamn dress they'll bury her in.

I wore that dress at the graduation ball," Lizzie said. "I had the dress and still a lot of bruises on my arms and I wore them like jewels. Everyone stared, whispered."

She looked at Darcy for the first time. "That night I took the train and when I arrived in London the next morning, I still wore that dress. Anne found me like that and the rest is history."

Lizzie saw him smiling slightly and turned around to kneel on her chair. She raised her hand which he still held on to and ran the other one over his cheek, traced the line from forehead to chin and felt the pins and needles shooting up her arm.

"You say I'm terrifying", she said. "With mere eyes and hair and believe me, monster, vampires and zombies, I can scare them all away, but you? I tried – _god, how I tried_ \- and you always ran when I didn't want you to. You scare me to death. Every hour of every day." She pressed his hand against her lips, tasted the sunlight that lit up flesh in a rosy-golden hue and closed her eyes for a second. "I already lost everything once before," she whispered. "I don't know if I could bear doing it again."

* * *

She stood at the entrance to his room. Arms slung around the oversized t-shirt she wore and watched him reading in the warm light of the lamp on his bedside table.

The world is new, she thought when she stepped into the room on legs still learning how to walk, on joints freshly put together and looked at Darcy with eyes seeing new perspectives, teaching her head new ways of thinking until he looked up and at her questioningly over the rim of his glasses.

"I can't sleep," she said, her voice still caught somewhere between insomnia and nightmares roused by words, by memories and she wrung her still new hands, ran them over finger tips that hadn't felt yet.

Darcy nodded, lifted the blanket.

The first breath had been rain, the second coffee. There'd been a thousand in between – toast and grass and shampoo in a warm shower – and this one, the thousandth and third breath was warmth and home and cigarettes and citrons, because no matter how long the tunnel is, there's always light at the end.

And Lizzie Bennet took a deep breath, gathered all her courage and scrambled into the bed and under the blanket.

* * *

**A/N: I hoped you liked it;) If you've got questions and you're not registered on ffnet, tumblr is the way to go! Try www dot theo dash la dash dora dot tumblr dot com and you end up on my side;) there are teasers and inspirations, playlists and aesthetics  
**


	32. Chapter 31 Richard sees a Zebra

**A/N: Greetings from London, people! This chapter has been written almost completely in the British Library which is (as anyone can guess) one of my absolute favourite places.  
**

**Quick reassurance: This story is not over until I write a big fat "FINIS" under the last line and there will be an epilogue and you will be warned and it should take another five chapters or so and then it's done? Are you all with me? Great.**

**Also, this is NOT THE PROLOGUE! I know why one may think that, but its not? The prologue is pretty much the last chapter so... **

**Soundtrack: The Light Behind Your Eyes (Piano Version) and Summertime - My Chemical Romance **

**Disclaimer: I'm just taking Austen's idea for a quick walk in the park...**

* * *

**Chapter 31: Richard sees a Zebra  
**

_She sits at the piano, the scarf that had been placed on the keys to keep away the dust, carefully folded up next to her and stares at the black and white pattern. The sun is shining just like it does almost every morning, illuminating dancing dust particles and the red in the girl's wild hair. Her neck seems strangely bare in the bright light, the red and black lines of the tattoo stark and clear. She looks so young, he thinks while standing in the doorway, watching her watching the keys._

_She sits there for three hours. _

* * *

The first thing Lizzie saw when she woke up that morning, sleepily blinking into the bright sunlight, was the amusedly smiling face of none other than Richard Fitzwilliam who, bathed into the incoming light, was sitting on a seat by the window.

"Good morning", the glittering man greeted her and his cherry red lips jerked with suppressed glee.

Lizzie blinked, pushed back hair from her face and made a barely identifiable sound.

"And such a beautiful morning it is! I often remarked that the beauty of Pemberley's mornings would one day induce me to become an early riser and –"

She frowned, rubbed her temples. "Are you – Are you _supposed_ to be here?"

"See!" The cherry red smile grew wider. "That's a _funny_ thing."

"I rather doubt that."

"Yes, well little grumblebear, there I am, arriving on this delightful spring morning after fighting the old dragon –"

"Is that a way to talk about relatives?"

"- the _oversized lizard_ then, for permission to take a few days of well-deserved vacation. I had to practically rip it out of her claws –"

"_Nice_. Very nice."

"Shht, don't interrupt my heroics, Papillon. The tale loses its dramatics otherwise and really, where would we be then?"

"Calm down, the barbarians are not _quite_ at the gates yet."

"But I hear them screaming bloody murder," Richard protested and pouted. He'd cut his hair short at the sides and formed the upper, longer part with gel into a wave which, in combination with the bright red lipstick, was impressively elegant in its simplicity.

"Yes, because you hear them neigh and galloping, it's a Zebra for sure," Lizzie snorted and sat up slowly.

"But see, I _did_ found a Zebra!"

"In Derbyshire?"

"Yes, there I arrive, poor, innocent thing that I am, in the expectation of finding one of my oldest, dearest friends and spend a few relaxing days and what do I find?"

"Interesting, is that the way you present yourself to your mother?"

"Pishposh, I'm an angel to my mother."

"But of course."

"Don't be so sarcastic, Papillon. No matter. I arrive and after dealing with that beast of a cat –"

"Don't insult Her Majesty!"

Richard snorted. "The mangy creature is now blue-blooded, too? Wouldn't surprise me if it were indeed the reincarnation of some mentally instable monarch. Henry the bloody Eight or something, bloodthirsty as that heap of wire wool is."

"Well, in this household there's just space for one diva," Lizzie commented, earning her another not-amused look from Richard. She giggled.

"Will you let me finish my story?" he asked and proceeded when she nodded. "So after locking that beast in the broom closet." Lizzie opened her mouth to protest, but Richard shushed her. "I then made my way to my dear, dear cousins bedchamber to refresh some lovely childhood memories –"

"He told me about that incident with the snow, you know?" No need to act so innocently."

"Innocent!" the glittering man cried out. "Innocent I'm not any longer! This… this unseemly display of indecency –"

"Indecency? Believe me, Richard, you have more experience with indecency than the whole north of England all together."

"That's because they're only sheep here."

"I really don't want to know how _sheep_ play into this."

"No? Considering that I found a Zebra in this bed…"

"Is that a pun on sodomy? Because oh my god, Richard, there are not even stripes in this room!"

"_Tut, tut_," Richard clucked and held up a finger with its nail glittering suspiciously. "Metaphors, Papillon. You," he pointed with said finger at her, "sleep in one bed with my cousin. Believe me, a real Zebra would have surprised me less."

Lizzie bit her lip, glanced to the side.

"Oh", Richard cried out. "So we're not talking about the big, pink elephant in the room?"

"I thought it was a Zebra."

"Hmm", he said. "Whatever you say, Papillon. I just want to remark on something-"

"_Oh my god_…"

"I totally knew it! I fucking _called_ it, damn it all!"

She snorted. "You knew nothing. The past half hour has been filled with circus animals and your complete astonishment."

"Oh, but I knew long before it that you have a crush on my cousin. I knew it and you were way too stubborn to say anything, admit it!"

"I will do no such thing, you nutter."

"You do! You're sitting in this bed and - _oh god_, please tell me you're wearing something under that shirt!" he cried out, pointing at her bare legs.

"And what will you do if I don't? Spontaneously combust? Pitch a fit? Choke on your own words?" she asked amusedly and tugged down the seam of her shirt.

"_University of Sheffield_?" Richard nearly screamed. "You're wearing his shirt? Oh my god, how rotten are morals here?"

"Is he still babbling?" a rough, sleepy voice suddenly chimed in and the hand wrapped around her hip pulled her just a bit closer to him. He pressed his forehead against her side and sighed. "Richard, go away."

The glittering man spluttered and Lizzie saw with delight how he took on the colour of a ripe tomato.

"_I will not_ –"

"You will", Darcy's slightly muffled voice grumbled and she giggled again. "You're intruding."

"Throws me out, unbelievable that is! I can't believe how rotten –"

"Be quiet, you lunatic _chatterbox_," Darcy mumbled again and Lizzie couldn't help but smile while carding her fingers through the tousled hair. The man practically purred and her smile grew wider.

"Oh my god!" Richard cried out yet again and when they both turned to look at him, he simply held up his cup of coffee and grumbled "_too much sugar_…"

* * *

_The next time, she raises her hands after two hours and he sees them trembling. What breaks your bones when playing the piano, he asked his sister, almost not wanting to hear the answer. Giana then asked the more important question. Who does it? _

_She touches the key but no sound emerges. When he later sees her at dinner, her lip is bitten bloody._

* * *

"I still can't believe it," Richard was still muttering three hours later and Lizzie who couldn't bear hearing the nth repetition of that sentence, hit him with her book in the hope of getting the record back on track.

"Ouch," the glittering man complained and moved away from her. "Brutal as always I see."

"Oh," she dimpled at him. "Did that hurt?"

He sent her a wounded look and rubbed his shoulder. "Darcy!" he yelled at his cousin who was currently occupied with teaching his sister the intricacies of playing Badminton. "Darcy, she's abusing me!"

"Good job!" Darcy yelled back with a laugh and was rewarded with a bright smile by Lizzie.

Breakfast had been a strange affair. Richard had dragged a confused and sleepy Giana into the room and while he'd alternated between hissing at Mrs Reynolds and grumbling into his breakfast, Giana, hidden behind mussed, dark hair, had winced every time the banter between her brother and Lizzie had dissolved into mutual laughter. She was not a ghost anymore ever since Lizzie had practically cornered her a few weeks ago to put a stop to that ridiculousness, but more than a squeaked "Good morning" here and there, she didn't offer much.

At least she'd stopped running from Lizzie.

"Oh my god," Richard said again and shuddered. "Papillon, please tell me you're not serious."

"Hmm?" Lizzie was still occupied watching the Darcy-siblings. "What do you mean?"

"This." He drew a circle in the air around her face with one finger. "That lovesick expression… oh god, Papillon, you've got it bad, don't you?"

"I'm afraid I don't catch your meaning," Lizzie replied, looking straight ahead.

"You better believe it, you sorry excuse for a traitor. Papillon, how could you? We always laughed about those lovesick idiots and how ridiculously happy they are and –"

"Did you take some heavy medication in the past few weeks? Because these hallucination sound quite horrifying."

"It's just not fair!" pouted Richard, leaning back on his sun bed, Ray Ban sun glasses perched on his nose. "Everyone has someone and I –"

"You throw rocks at old people in the park?"

He shot her a glare, definitely not amused about the reference. "No," he then said, scrunching up his nose. "Contrary to you, _I_ do possess a certain amount of self-control and have therefore no need to resort to mindless violence to appease baser instincts. That seems uncouth."

She laughed and Darcy, having sent the shuttlecock back to Giana, looked up and smiled. "Oh god," Richard whined for the seventy-fourth time that day and sank deeper into the cushions. "You two are like a walking advertisement for caries. I can literally feel my teeth _decay_ just by looking at you."

She hit him again with her book.

"Well," he said, rubbing his arm with a grumble and only one death threat. "At least you get a shag out of it… must be nice."

He barely noticed Lizzie's subtle freezing until she answered in a strained voice. "We're not… _shagging_, Richard."

"Of course you are, I caught you this morning. How stupid do you think I am?"

"No, we… we _sleep together in a bed_, but…"

Richard looked up, taking off his glasses. "Are you telling me, Papillon, that after everything – the whole drama, the alcohol and the heartbreak… that you still haven't confessed your undying love for each other?" He started laughing, uncontrollably so and Lizzie looked more and more put out the stronger his fit of laughter grew.

"We are…," she stammered. "We're on the _way_."

"Did you at least kiss him after that showdown at Rosings?" Richard gasped, balancing dangerously close on the sunbed's edge and his laughter grew even louder when Lizzie turned an interesting shade of red and resorted to biting her lip.

"Still nothing… I see…" He wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and the movement was all it took to tip him over the – quite literal – edge. In a laughing heap of wildly strewn about limbs he fell to the floor and as if it was the funniest thing in the world, he just curled up in the foetal position and continued his laughing fit.

"What has Richard in a conniption now?" Darcy asked, having finished the game of Badminton after Giana shot four of the five shuttlecocks into the tree crown and with a quick kiss pressed against her hair, sat down next to her on the sun bed.

Lizzie, still slightly blushing, nervously twirled one strand of hair between her fingers and leaned against him. "I don't know," she then said. "I think he saw a Zebra."

* * *

_This time she has wrapped a scarf around her shoulders. The rain is crackling incessantly against the window panes and when they woke up that morning she buried her nose in his shirt and refused to climb out of bed. _

_Each night is different. There are nights where she doesn't crawl into his bed until the early morning hours, clammy and with cold feet and others where she acts like they've done this a thousand times and will do it another thousand and then some. On some nights she's a human radiator with fiery skin, kicking off all the blankets and taking up ninety percent of the bed space with widespread limbs and loose hair; on others she shivers and clings, presses so tightly against him as if she wants to crawl into him and emits a whining sound when he frees her fingers in order to move. There are nightmares where she kicks and bites and scratches, screaming barely intelligible words and there are those in which she lies paralysed and he rubs her fingers until they're warm again. He learns the spots that don't send her off into a panic, the touches that don't burn, learns not to hold her hands when she screams in the dark, but to push back the hair from her face until she can breathe again. _

_She plays two notes that day and they ring throughout the entire house. _

* * *

It was not okay.

It was not _okay_.

Lizzie Bennet crossed her arms in front of her chest and pushed her chin forwards.

A finger poked her between her ribs. "Are you still sulking?"

"_Harumph_."

"Very informative," Darcy commented while pouring himself a cup of coffee. "Did you come up with that yourself? Impressive."

"_Harumph_."  
"Yes, I'm feeling fine. Thank you for asking. A bit chilly last night because someone was hoarding the blankets to build an Igloo apparently."

The resulting _Harumph_ was muffled by half a croissant and two sips of coffee and Darcy had to pat her back to save her from a most unpleasant death.

"Does one ever get used to them playing house quite so casually?" Richard asked a wide-eyed, vaguely panicked looking Giana in reaction to the display in front of them and sighed. "Well, at least you didn't have to watch them dance around each other at Rosings. That one," he pointed at Lizzie, "was completely convinced your brother was the Anti-Christ and he was a grumbling exemplar of awkward muteness and deeply meaningful staring. Believe me, I wanted to _tear my hair out by the roots_!" Giana just squeaked in response while her eyes followed the proceedings like one would follow a tennis match.

"It was just a suggestion, Lizzie," Darcy said, picking oatmeal from her hair with a fond smile after the last _Harumph_ had covered her in them.

"What in the Lord's name did you suggest that your lady love turned into the love child of Mrs Reynolds and the cookie monster, Darcy?" Richard asked with a frown.

Darcy rolled his eyes and raised both hands in surrender. "I simply remarked upon the fine weather and the fact that the convertible in the garage is working again."

"As _if_!" Lizzie spluttered, her first words that morning and glared at Darcy. "You did much more than simply remarking on the weather, you patronizing _pillow snatcher_!"

"Oh, will you look at that, Gigi? This is their natural habitat. I bloody knew that this revolting display of heart eyes and oh-let's-hold-hands-sentimentality wouldn't keep for long."

"B-But…. They're _arguing_!" Giana stammered, watching the banter with ever wider growing eyes.

"Ah… well, watch and learn," was all Richard said before pushing half a muffin into her open mouth.

"You don't even need a pillow!" Darcy countered with quiet amusement in his eyes. "And considering that you're about half my size, you take up an astonishing amount of space."

"That's true," Richard remarked. "She's an octopus. All arms and legs that you wouldn't believe there're only four limbs."

Everyone stared at him. "How do you know that?" Giana asked surprised. Lizzie just rolled her eyes.

"He makes a good pillow."

"She tends to misuse me for all sort of purposes when drunk," the glittering man nodded.

"You and… you and _Richard_?" Giana's voice shrilled and the rest of the group winced.

Lizzie shook her head in disbelief. "Did you read one too many harlequin-romances, Mary-Sue? Because first… _urgh_." She grimaced. "That whole doppelganger-number is creepy enough without adding vampires and a half-incestuous love triangle to the mix and secondly, have you ever been involved with two guys at the same time, _Elena Gilbert_? Because let me tell you, that takes more than one planner and the corresponding brain."

"And that was this morning's entertainment," Darcy cut through the rather awkward silence and nudged Lizzie with one elbow. "You're supposed to break the ice, love, not take an ice pick and cut a hole into the great lake in the middle of winter."

Lizzie glared at him. "And don't you dare think you're forgiven, Mr. Let's-make-a-trip-to-Morecambe-Bay-the-weather-is-so-nice!"

"That's the crime you committed?" Richard chimed in after helping Giana clear out pieces of muffin from her airways. "Mate, have you no clue what to talk about the morning after? Ask her if she slept well, if it was good, if she wants to…"

Lizzie's snorting laughter cut him off mid-sentence and even Giana, despite blushing to the roots couldn't help but snigger.

"And when was the last time you slept with a woman?" Darcy asked, one eyebrow raised. "Some time in the mid-nineties?"

The laughter grew louder and Richard's pout more pronounced. "Do you mind? I slept with lots of women-"

"Thank you, that's quite enough," Darcy cut him off with a disbelieving shake of his head. "We don't need to hear all about your escapades, the words leotard and pink leather boots in one sentence are traumatizing enough." He turned to Lizzie. "I simply suggested making a trip with the convertible. The car has no GPS, therefore should we find ourselves in the lovely town of Meryton, it's either due to pure chance or because you decided on the way. And for heaven's sake," he handed his still cherry red, still laughingly coughing sister a napkin. "Take some pity on Giana, not everyone's as wicked as you two. Look, she already looks like a fire engine!"

Giana managed a choked "Thank you" and blushed even more furiously.

"I'm outside at the garage if someone's looking for me. Trip or no trip", Darcy then announced and, taking his cup of coffee, marched as cool as you please and whistling out of the breakfast room.

"Did he just….?"

"- really…?"

The stunned silence was only interrupted by Giana's squeak when the Darcy-girl rushed out of the room with a plea to be excused.

Richard sighed. "You shouldn't be so hard on her, Papillon."

"Hmm?" Lizzie asked, deep in thoughts and looked up. At Richard's arched eyebrow she rolled her eyes. "Her little-girl attitude gets on my nerves. The girl had a secret, sordid affair with Wickham for years and now she's blushing like a virgin at the slightest innuendo? Hetty is year younger and only half as naïve."

"Well, aside from the fact that Wickham staged some kind of Disney-romance with hands strictly above the waist and pompous declarations of love from what I heard, there's also the car accident, the amnesia, the resulting mental breakdown and her natural naivety to consider as explanations."

Lizzie's chin jutted forward defiantly.

"How do you think she feels, Papillon?" Richard continued. "There's suddenly someone in this house, in her brother's bed with a striking resemblance to the woman who'd been more mother than sister to her and who at the same time is so not at all like Emily that she barely knows how to look at you."

Another sigh. "You know, Richard, sometimes I really do hate you."

"With the greatest pleasure, Papillon. May I ask why this time?"

"Because now I have to be _nice_ to her."

* * *

_She's tamed her hair in a wild, French braid and smiles when he places a cup of tea on the piano. She's endlessly running fingers over fingers, rubbing the white half-moon lines. "I have this melody in my head," she says. "It vibrates in these walls as if it were a part of them, rustles in the trees, echoes in the rain and even follows me into my dreams."_

"_Do you need paper to write it down?" he asks, leaning down to pet Mrs Reynolds who's snuggling up to him. _

"_No," she says, looking out of the window. "Beautiful things shouldn't be trapped."_

* * *

She wore a pale yellow sun dress and sandals when she walked out of the house and got into the waiting car. He sat on the driver's seat and adjusted the radio, a smile on his lips when he saw her attire.

"Where to, Madam?" he asked, starting the engine. She pushed a pair of oversized Jacky-Kennedy glasses up her nose, pursed her lips and adjusted the silk scarf she'd delicately wrapped around her head.

"North-West," she then announced and if he saw her hands clenching at the word, he didn't say it.

They drove for a while and after an hour or so Lizzie's inner tension knocked her out so that she lost her superhuman grip on the handle of the car door and fell asleep in the warm sunlight and the surprisingly warm, very nearly summerly May air.

She woke up when they left the highway.

"Can you stop here?" she asked, practically in the middle of a deserted road after another hour of driving. "It's not far from here and I'd like to walk the rest."

Darcy cast a sceptical glance on the completely deserted landscape and squinted his eyes as if trying to detect a hint of civilization somewhere in the distance.

"You can't see it," Lizzie said quietly, "but that stream over there ends in a small lake on the edge of the Cavanaugh's property."

Darcy just nodded and after safely hiding the car on the roadside, he followed her down to the stream where she pulled off her shoes and with them in hand, jumped from rock to rock down the stream.

It was a strangely peaceful silence surrounding them while they made their way towards Meryton and Lizzie softly hummed in the warm spring air, thinking about the times when she as a child had taken the same path. Darcy was a quiet presence next to her in a white shirt and sun glasses, hiding most of his thoughts and Lizzie was grateful for it.

Her own head was already filled to the brim.

"I think I'll wait here," he said when the Cavanaugh's property came into view and pointed to an old, knobby tree with roots so big they could serve as a bench, from where he could oversee the whole garden.

Lizzie nodded, gulped. "He'll see me," she then said quietly. "If he's home, he'll see me."

The corners of Darcy's mouth quirked up. "Here," he said, handing her a pair of white lace gloves wrapped in tissue paper. They were ruffled around the wrist and therefore offered some protection against unwanted contact. "I found them in the attic between my grandmother's old things and thought you'd like them."

She nodded, pressed her lips together tightly when she tasted salt. He adjusted her glasses, kissed her forehead.

"We can just leave," he whispered in her ear. "We leave and come back tomorrow, the day after and the day after that and every day you go a bit further. One word and I won't ask any questions. It's your choice. But I also know, you brave, wild girl that you're not seventeen anymore and that should he dare even look at you strangely, you'll chastise him with the same glare you used on me that time in Charlie's hallway."

"Amused horror?" Lizzie asked, but with a laugh.

Darcy shook his head, leaned in further. "A challenge to fight. And I'm pretty sure we both now who'd win that battle."

With a bit on her lip Lizzie nodded and made her way down the stream to the invisible border separating the rest of Meryton from the Cavanaugh's property.

It was strange being back. Christmas she'd done her best and then some to forget, in a bitter, defiant act of rebellion but now –

She breathed in deeply and hummed the melody that had been haunting her ever since she'd arrived in Pemberley.

It helped breathing.

She hadn't been walking for long when she saw from a distance how he left the house, a shock of gleaming, blond hair in the bright sun and she also saw someone she thought to be Florence – judging by the red hair – jumping up and down behind him, but her once best friend stayed behind and it was only Matthew who greeted her a few metres away from the mansion.

"Dora," he said, a mix of wonder and hope written in his face and held out one hand as if to greet her.

She just stared at him and he dropped it.

"Matthew," she said after a while, her brow furrowed. He was like one of these strange flickering pictures that show different scenes depending on how you hold it, a layering of different versions and he was the same Matthew from her memories and at the same time not at all.

"You look…," he paused, his voice rough. "You changed, Dora."

She winced at the repetition of that nickname. "It's been a while," she finally said.

"Yes." They both just stared at each other. "Of course."

"I heard you're studying medicine," he then began again in an effort to make conversation and tried a smile. "In London?"

"I heard you do the same."

"Not in London," he said. "But other than that everything's just like we planned it to be, I –"

"If I remember correctly," she interrupted him icily. "Your plan involved you studying medicine while I pass my time doing something nice like art history or literature until we marry and I can play the part of a society wife."

She saw her words bite and he winced.

"Dora…" He made a step towards her and she took three back.

"Don't fool yourself, Matthew, your plan was always only about you."

Something seemed to break in the blond man's face and when he spoke again his voice was quiet.

"I… I owe you an apology."

She remained silent.

"I wasn't aware at the time how… how _wrong_ my behaviour was. I thought… I _excused_ it with…" He tugged at his hair, laughing bitterly. "I talked to…_people_, I have a therapist for a year now – crazy man, you'd like him. He doesn't judge, simply looks at me over edge of his journal and manages to make me feel guilty faster than you can say 'Tillinger's knickers' and…" He stopped, looked at her with a nearly haunted expression in his eyes. "I'm sorry."

She looked at him, nodded abruptly, too much in head and heart to speak.

"I wanted to tell you earlier," he added. "Brandon – my therapist – he has a kind of 12 step program for me and I tried finding you, but you'd dropped off the face of the earth and your Mum couldn't be more specific than 'London' which wasn't exactly helpful. Florence tried finding you on Facebook, but to no avail."

"On purpose," Lizzie said. "My mother knows that I would break off all contact if she hands out my phone number. But why didn't you ask Jane?"

"Jane?" Matthew let out a laugh. "I doubt she'd have left me enough blood to survive, had I dared to do that."

"Jane?" Lizzie asked disbelievingly.

"Did she never tell you about how she punched once?"

"_Jane_ punched you?" Her voice shrilled a bit.

"Shortly after you left." Matthew shrugged. "I've tried keeping my distance since then."

"How very intelligent of you."

Matthew laughed again. "See," he said. "That's what I missed. Dora, Dora… Dora with the biting wit and charm…" He didn't notice Lizzie freezing and the expression in his eyes turned wistful. "I often imagined it, did you know? How you'd come back. Sometimes you'd sit on my bed, book in hand and barely look up when I come in, sometimes I dream about finding you in London, in the tube, St. James Park, I dream about walking down a street and seeing you in the reflection of a shop window. And sometimes I sit in the garden and dream about you coming down the stream towards the house as you did today…" He sighed. "But… it's too late, isn't it?"

Lizzie crossed her arms in front of her chest, staring at the old mansion that had once been her second home. "I thought I would hate you," she finally said. "It burned in my veins, all those angry words I'd never been able to yell at you, my unbelievable fury and sorrow over all that happened, but now…" She shook her head. "I don't _like_ you," she finally said and it sounded so childish in the middle of all these dramatics that she very nearly burst out laughing. Matthew remained silent. "It sounds quite stupid, but that's how I feel. You took everything from me, my family, my friends, my baby and still… there's _nothing_, no big feelings, just nothing… I just don't _like_ you and that…" She caught herself before the laugh in her throat threatened to overspill.

"Why did you come then?" he asked dully.

She feel silent. "I talked to Darcy," she then said, her eyes flickering over to that white spot on top of the hill.

"Darcy?" Matthew's eyes followed hers. "He's here? Are you… are you…"

"He's my…," she bit her lip. "He's my _friend_."

The expression in Matthew's eyes turned stormy and unhappy. She backed away.

"I thought you were lying," she then admitted quietly. "Spreading words like poison, but then… I thought that perhaps you really do believe the tale you're telling. Perspectives and all that."

He frowned. "I don't see how…"

"The baby," she rushed to say and it was like ice on her tongue. "I always thought you knew about the miscarriage, that it was an accident and not intention…" She blinked. "I thought you cruel enough to use it as blackmail but when you're still telling that story… I thought perhaps you do really believe it."

"Dora…"

"Here," She handed him a piece of paper, carefully in order not to touch him.

"What's that?"

"The address of the hospital in Lancaster where they took me to." She worried her lip again. "There's a garden with a small part set aside for graves for the stillbirths. Our baby… it was too young to be buried there, there wasn't much… _left_, but the nurse on the unit… she took pity on me and made the arrangements for the… the curettage to be set to rest there." Lizzie bit back wild tears. "Ask for nurse Barleigh, she… she should remember me."

Matthew looked up and saw the dangerous shimmer in his eyes.

"His name was Theodore," she concluded quietly. "Theodore Bennet Cavanaugh."

"Dora…"

"Give the nurse my best", she then said, backing off a few more steps. He stood up, eyes wide, hand stretched out as if wanting to reach for her and she bowed her head slightly as if bidding him goodbye. "Farewell, Matthew Cavanaugh. I hope we'll never see each other again."

* * *

_She plays a sequence of sounds with a grimly determined expression on her face, faster and faster, up and down and her fingers blur so fast is she urging them. He hears her cursing under her breath when her fingers don't obey her, when bones, flesh and muscles don't bow to her will and the notes get shriller, get hastier and her hair curls in wild strands around her face, hiding it. _

_He pulls her hands back by her elbows, catches them against her chest and when she finally breaks down, it's horrifying. She suddenly stills, her head falls back and her mouth opens in a silent, detorted scream, a sequence turning into a long, sorrowful lament, her skin hot and feverish. He sits down next to her on the bench and while she wordlessly cries against his shoulder, he plays the melody that's been haunting him ever since she came to Pemberley._

_Over and over again. _

* * *

"Richard says, he and Giana are in Lancaster," Darcy announced shortly after they were back on the road. Both had said very little after Lizzie had come back up the hill and climbed into the car with only a small smile in her companion's direction. It was late afternoon by now and the incredible warmth of that day cooled down rapidly the weaker the sun grew.

"What are they doing there of all places?" Lizzie asked while playing around with the radio trying to find something other than cheesy country-pop.

Darcy handed her a blanket which she used to cover her bare legs. "Surprising us apparently. I was instructed by Richard to explicitly remind you to be _nice. _Whatever that's supposed to mean."

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "Richard sees too many Zebras."

"Contrary to what exactly?" He still wore the sun glasses and Lizzie couldn't quite make out his mood. "He's not completely off in his assessment, love. Giana may… she may irritate one, but she's no Wickham deserving of ginger in various orifices."

"You'll never let me live that one down, will you?"

"Why should I?" He grinned boyishly while driving up the highway. "It was the highlight of my day."

"Well, you should definitely consider a life style change then," she said dryly. "With expectations like that I don't want to know what a carnival may do to you. Or a good comedy show."

"Believe me, I got my very own, personified comedy show 24/7."

"Well," she replied, a smile playing around her lips. "I admit, Richard _is_ quite amusing."

He just shook his head.

"You have a tendency to sacrifice yourself for others," she said after a while, looking out of the window. "And I think that… that some people know that only too well and like to make use of it."

It was quiet for a long time before Darcy laughed quietly and – without lifting his eyes off the street – reached out a hand to lightly squeeze her arm. "I don't know if I should feel flattered or insulted that you've apparently decided to rescue me as the damsel in distress from the great, big dragon."

"Someone has to do it after all, right?" Lizzie grumbled and buried herself deeper in her blanket. "It's not like you'd take care of yourself."

Darcy laughed. "I'm very grateful to you… Even though you have quite strange ideas of dragons, love."

"Well, they do breathe fire," Lizzie said as if that was quite a sensible thing to say.

Darcy nodded. "That they do."

It wasn't far from Meryton to Lancaster, little more than an hour and when they arrived at the club whose address Richard had given them, it was Darcy who blinked repeatedly while Lizzie just laughed in delight and dragged him inside.

The establishment had character, that was indisputable. Bare concrete walls, ceilings and floors were covered with a myriad of stickers, posters and graffiti and illuminated by rhythmically blinking lights. Tattered leather couches held together by copious amounts of tape were strewn across the room and the music was a loud, deafening droning of basses and incensed words.

"Papillon!" Richard cried out, seemingly appearing out of nowhere in front of them, Giana trailing after him looking just as uncomfortable as her brother. "When asking the lad at the gas station for the best club in town, I did have something completely different in mind." He wrinkled his nose when someone in striped, tight pants and a headband walked past them. "A bit more style perhaps. So far two of these… _creatures_ have grunted at me and the third one offered me his lipstick – Black! I beg of you, as if that would work well with the rest of the ensemble." He pointed at the light dress shirt and vest he wore and shuddered dramatically. "But the drinks are good and I thought we could all view it as a morbid kind of learning experience."

Lizzie grinned widely, one hand still slung around Darcy's arm as if she was afraid he might disappear if not held onto. "Do you think they'll survive?" she asked with a look at both Darcys who were watching their surroundings like a pair of traumatized bunnies.

"I'd say, the experience should be well worth the effort, Papillon", the glittering man smirked with a wave of his bright red nails and Lizzie quickly exchanged Darcy's hand with Giana's and disappeared with a dramatically cried out "Tequila!" in the crowd assembled around the bar.

The mix of salt and lime still on her tongue, they found the gentlemen again a short while later at the edge of the dance floor and Lizzie handed a still shuddering Giana back to Richard with a roll of her eyes before turning to Darcy with a mischievous smile.

"I think I still owe you a dance," she said, her eyes sparkling and she stretched out both – still lace covered – hands.

"As you wish, Miss Bennet," he said and let her drag him into the boiling crowd.

* * *

_He's humming the same song later that evening when they're lying in bed and he uses her breath as a time base. _

_It's a promise and he begs whoever's listening that he'll be able to keep it. _

* * *

"Lizzie!"

The car was still moving when a tiny, scarf-covered person jumped out of the door like an oversized rubber ball. A just as loudly yelled "Anne!" sounded as an answer and before any of the spectators knew what was happening the two girls were laying in each other's arms.

A steady stream of "Let me look at it, you look great! Was your journey alright? Are those new earrings? I'm so sorry it took so long but the defence of my thesis kept being postponed and… Oh my god!" Anne's golden eyes seemed to spill over and she hugged Lizzie again. "I'm so happy you're doing better," she whispered in Lizzie's ear who just hugged her tighter.

"I missed you so much, little ambergirl," she whispered.

"But not too much, I gather?" Anne's smirk was mischievous and her eyes flickered to Darcy who was watching the proceedings with evident amusement from the top of the entrance stairs. "Richard told me about the Zebra and I have to confess to being quite surprised by that turn of events."

Lizzie worried her lip again, blushing a bit. "Richard's a terribly nosy person," was all she offered though.

"Are we finally there?" another, not very familiar voice suddenly asked and when she saw the owner of that voice her mouth fell open.

"You took _Benwick_ with you? Her voice was laced with panic. "Even though _Richard_ is here? Anne, the coke and mentos experiments may be a very funny thing to watch on Youtube, but they're not really suitable for _in vivo_ re-enactments."

"Firstly, _we_ did nothing. Benwick is a grown man and not an object to carry around at one's leisure. He has a pair of functioning legs and hopefully doesn't expect anyone to take up the part of a medieval chairman. Secondly, he's here on Lou's invitation. Hetty is off with Hayter for a weekend in Paris and Lou apparently felt the boredom too keenly." Anne shrugged. "Darcy said it wouldn't be a problem, what with all those rooms here in Pemberley."

Lizzie pursed her lips. "Well, your dear cousin also possesses a tendency towards martyrdom and shouldn't be encouraged."

"Oh, are you training him now?" Lou asked with a grin, phone still pressed against her ear while she hugged Lizzie and expressed her delight at seeing her returned from the undead considering that "no matter how often they're resurrected in the cinema, drivelling corpses in a quest for brains are simply unappetizing."

"As if that were remotely _possible_."

"Pralines and water, my dear. Now, why don't you erstwhile try your luck with _that_?" the redhead replied, nodding towards the car out of which a fourth person had just climbed into the light of day and while Anne quietly chastised Lou, Lizzie sent a quick prayer to whatever deity was inclined to listen.

"Anne?" she asked the ambergirl who'd suddenly discovered a newfound fascination with the tips of her shoes, judging from the level of attention she bestowed upon them.

"Hmm…"

"Anne_, by the devil's frozen lower half_, what is Wentworth doing in Pemberley?"

"Not my idea," the ambergirl grumbled, eyes still fixed on her feet. Lizzie turned to Lou.

"Me neither." The redheaded girl shook her head, hurriedly typing something on her phone.  
"I'm innocent, too," Benwick chimed in, approaching the group from behind with a bag in hand.

"Then why is she _here_, Anne?"

"Yes, Anne." Lou turned to her cousin. "Why is she here?" She glanced at Lizzie. "That's a really curious question, you know? Why is Wentworth here? Why is she always at _Philip's_? Why did she show up at your thesis defence? Why is she always _accidentally_ buying too much take-away so that _someone_ has to eat it with her to prevent it from going off?" Anne turned redder with every pointed question and Lizzie almost took pity on her. "See, Lizzie, Annie here is absolutely convinced that Wentworth does all these things simply because she's just so damn _nice_."

"Doesn't keep them from bickering though," Benwick chimed in with a dry chuckle. "They've been at it for the whole drive, my poor ears, I tell you –"

"Annie-lee!" a voice suddenly boomed from the entrance and Lizzie recognized that sparking ball of pink, glitter and a custom-tailored, three-piece Armani suit only after it had already swallowed Anne completely.

"What the hell is _that_?" fell out Benwick's mouth while Lou and Lizzie discussed whether or not one should attempt to rescue Anne.

"Don't worry," Lou was just saying, "That's like Jonah and the whale. At some point he will –" when suddenly with an irritated sound the glittering _something_ let go of Anne who gasped for air and was promptly caught by Wentworth.

"_What_ is supposed to be _what exactly_?" Richard asked indignantly, taking in the whole of Benwick including leather trousers, tattoos and untameable hair with one glance from head to toe. "And while we're on the subject of _existences_, what are you supposed to be? Second assistant to the deputy manager at a second rate branch of _we-like-it-kinky_?"

Lou almost choked on her laugh while Lizzie and Anne blinked wildly from man to man.

Benwick slowly blinked once, a lazy grin spreading on his face. "Nah, I can't imagine working for you should be any fun, you strange bird."

"Bir-" The word died a rather painful death in Richard's mouth and made space for a rather deadly glint in his eyes. "Darcy!" he yelled, stalking in an enraged fashion back into the house. "Call the exterminator! I refuse to sleep with _vermin_ in the house!"

"As if that were news to him," Benwick remarked dryly, eyes fixed on Richard's retreating form. "Pray tell, what species are you breeding here up in the North? I thought that kind of bird of paradise needed a temperate environment and regular feeding times to survive."

No one could give him an answer to that and after Lou had dragged Benwick into the house and Anne and Wentworth had also disappeared still bickering back and forth, Lizzie pressed her forehad against Darcy's shoulder and closed her eyes. "Take a picture," she told him. "Because believe me, this is the last time that house is still standing."

"What was that?" Darcy asked stunned after regaining his voice.

Lizzie snickered. "That, my dear, was a Zebra."

* * *

_When he wakes up in the morning, she isn't there. It takes him a moment until he hears it, but then he's stumbling still half asleep into the morning room and stops in the doorway._

_She's still wearing his shirt, her hair a mess piled on top of her head. Her tongue peaks out between her lips while she concentrates on the keys and her eyes sparkle while fingers, keys, notes form a melody just as familiar as it's completely new._

_And she plays. _

* * *

**A/N: So... did you like it?  
**

**Some comments: both Lizzie and Darcy play the piano version of The Light Behind Your Eyes by My Chemical Romance (it's a beautiful song so you should definitely check it out). **

**Kudos to everyone catching the Scrubs reference (the comment about throwing rocks at old people is from the conversation between Ted, JD and the janitor about the formers love troubles) **

**IMPORTANT!: I did debate for a long while about whether or not including a confrontation with Matthew was something I wanted to do. This story is by no means to be taken as a role model for surviving domestic abuse. Portrayed views and opinions are highly subjective and confronting that person is not always the best decision or the safest one. I don't tend to write villains in terms of irredemable bad people and while Matthew's behaviour is horrifying, he's not... he's not Voldemort. I talked to my friend and we agreed that he'd probably get some points for narcissim on a personality disorder/psychopathy scale but it's by no means clinical. He has a natural tendency enhanced by observed learning (his parents) and tends to think of Lizzie as 'his', but he's not... calculating. **

**If you have questions and you don't have an FFN account, try tumblr: theo dash la dash dora dot tumbrl dot com **


	33. Chapter 32 Porcelain

**A/N: So on to the next one...  
**

**To the confused guest reviewer: The zebra thing is Richard's metaphor for finding Lizzie and Darcy being all couple-ly. It stems from the idiom ****"When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras" which fits with occam's razor (the easiest solution is often the correct one) and speaks of Richard's suprise at finding a zebra and not a horse (finding them being cuddly and not fighting). It kind of takes on a new meaning from there, which is a very Lizzie/Richard thing to do (overplaying metaphors, using them in different contexts) and is used every time Richard experiences something new/unexpected/strange (i.e. Benwick). Sorry for the late reply, if you want answers in a more timely manner, it might be best to send anonymous asks on my tumblr page since I can reply directly there and you get answers quicker;) And no, you don't need to listen to the playlist to get references. They're more a extension to get a feeling across (mainly the one for Meryton and the letter chapter are ones that I'd like to make compulsory, because these songs are the essence of what I wrote in those two chapters).  
**

**To the playlist guest: I'm thinking about it and when I get on to spotify one of these days, I'll definitely make one (I'm one of those annoying people who likes buying CD's and doesn't? use? much? spotify?)**

**to the very kind one: yeah the rather nasty comments threw me off a bit and anonymous ones are always shit, but hey, i left them there and I still intend to. I'm stubborn that way and since the author of those masterstrokes dared me to delete them... **

**Soundtrack: Ex's &amp; Oh's - Elle King**

**Disclaimer: The fish and the alcohol are mine, I'm still debating on the dog lead**

* * *

**Chapter 32: Porcelain**

„Oh come on", Anne prompted her as soon as they arrived in Lizzie's room. In Lizzie's empty, unused room with the perfectly made bed in the middle of it that stuck out like the scarlet letter on Lizzie's proverbial chest. "Spill!"

"What?" Lizzie asked curiously. "My lunch, by chance? Believe me, stomach acid does several rather nasty things to lettuce."

"Oh, do we eat our feelings as of late?" Anne arched an eyebrow unimpressed and flopped down on one of the velvet cushioned chairs. "I'd hoped they'd taste considerably better than _salad_ these days."

"Depends on the dressing," Lizzie replied, inspecting her fingernails.

"Indeed?"

"It's a rather complicated process." Lizzie nodded. "The secret lies in the combination. One does not talk much about it."

Anne snorted.

"- but it leads to very, very… _promising_ results."

The ambergirl nodded as if that was a very logical conclusion. "I've always had a weakness for a good Curry-Mango dressing," she offered, drawing a spontaneous laugh from Lizzie. "But nowadays I find myself in the unenviable position of having to bake a Crème Brûlée on an open fire."

"Unbelievable," Lizzie replied, leaning against the window. Anne looked up sharply and the corners of Lizzie's mouth twitched.

"Too much sugar," was all she said, however.

Anne hummed a non-committal answer. "I brought him flowers," she then said and Lizzie froze. "Charlotte said she'd plant a few more cheerful things as soon as it's warm enough and she has the time."

"Oh," Lizzie said and blinked. The world in front of her eyes blurred a bit, got soft around the edges. "That's good, that's… he should… the grave should look… cheerful."

"How do you feel about that?" the amber girl asked.

"The flowers?" Lizzie asked. "She should use lots of different colours, I think that would-"

"Lizzie…"

She shut her eyes tightly. "I dream of him. He sits there with his cigarette and grins and I have to be still, so very still… because if I move, he leaves and I… I can't breathe and then-" She looked up at Anne with glittering eyes and bit her lip. "Sometimes I'm so _angry_, Anne."

"Oh Lizzie…"

"He should be here, should watch over me and – He left and I'm alone and I… I should have taken care of him, I promised after all and I'm… I'm so angry, Anne. I miss him, I…" The amber girl caught her, held her.

"I know, love. I know..."

* * *

Ever since their guests had arrived at Pemberley, it felt like every few minutes a bunch of bigger and smaller fireworks went off. It was like midnight on New Year's Eve on repeat and while Darcy stoically read his book, Giana looked around with wide eyes, Anne fled from Wentworth and Lou used her phone as a lifeline, Richard and Benwick gleefully set off firework after firework at every encounter and delighted, like a bunch of giggling school children, in seeing them hit their targets - mainly each other.

It was a metaphor of course.

Of course.

That didn't mean though that the detonations weren't audible in the whole house.

* * *

"I'd call you a thickheaded, ignorant _pillock_ with bad taste in hair styles if it wasn't so utterly _pointless_ to try and proselytise the hopeless!"

"Oh, are you still harping on about that devil-worshipper-delusion?" Benwick asked an enraged Richard who, coffee pot in hand, loomed over the breakfast table as if he wanted to lunge at the man at any second.

The tattooed man with the piercings in mouth, nose and brow simply arched the latter and continued to sip his tea.

"It's not a delusion if those skulls on your arm are laughing directly at me." Richard sniffed. "And just for future reference, the Death Eater look is _soo_ 1998, it's ridiculous!"

"There's something about these Nineties that's eating at Richard," Lizzie whispered in Darcy's ear while filling Her Majesty's bowl with fresh milk. "Doesn't sound like a good decade for him."

The man shrugged. "He was enrolled in 1990 and never forgave the year for it. Some rubbish about how diabolic the number 'Nine' is because it's made up of three Threes. When I asked if he wasn't confusing it with the 666, he simply looked at me and announced quite condescendingly that it was a common misconception."

"Hmm," Lizzie mumbled around a piece of croissant in her mouth. "Those private boarding schools must have been a complete horror. All those privileges. _Tsst_."

"For someone who loves to dress up with his mother's old ball gowns in the attic? Absolutely."

Lizzie looked at him wide-eyed for a second. "Do you always have to spoil my fun?" she grumbled, snagging his newspaper and opening it with a disgusted look at the headline.

"Oh it was nothing that dramatic," Darcy brushed it off with a laugh after taking the economics part back. "Richard was captain of the lacrosse team and later Head Boy. They all followed him like ducks." Lizzie looked relieved. "And he turned pink glitter fashionable."

She threw her croissant at his head.

"Those were the Nineties!" Darcy justified himself. "You should have seen him when he decided to tease his hair and styled the rest of the lacrosse team, too"

"Isn't that part of the Eighties?" Wentworth interjected after following Anne into the breakfast room. The amber girl saved herself onto the empty chair next to Lizzie and a still spluttering Richard which had the raven girl looking dejectedly at the last empty chairs on the other side of the table.

"He always had a rather unbridled feeling for resurrecting unfortunate trends of times past," Darcy remarked wryly and Anne laughed outright.

"The bicoloured tights," she spluttered in her tea. "When he so wanted to be a nobleman on his eight birthday. Everybody else was more than content with running around in metal boxes when temperatures where in the thirties even in the shadows, but _no_, Richard wanted to be _historically correct_. "

"And so I was," Richard sniffed and glared at the sniggering threesome at one end of the table. Lizzie blinked at him mischievously from her place, wedged between Darcy and Anne and winked when she slid her arm underneath Darcy's to steal the last strawberry on his plate.

"Doesn't surprise me," Benwick remarked over the rim of his delicate, rose patterned porcelain tea cup.

"Oh really?" Richard nearly spit out the words.

"Pedantic and with OCD?" Benwick pursed his lips. "You probably made those qualities part of your job description, didn't you?"

"And thank your god on your fucking knees for it," Richard snapped, slamming his mug down so hard on the table that the liquid spilled over. "And that I don't drag bacteria out of pure sloppiness into the sterile environment around my three-year-old leukaemia patient who's waiting for a bone marrow donation, because I wasn't patient enough to put on the fucking gloves and gown!" He shot the tattooed man a withering glare and rushed out of the room.

"Puh," Wentworth sighed while Benwick gaped after Richard and the other three cast surreptitious glances at everyone but Benwick.

"He's… a _doctor_?" he asked, tea cup forgotten in his hands.

"Head of Pediatrics at Rosings Hospital in London," Darcy answered after a while with a sigh. "Where he gathers money from the wealthy to finance operations for his less privileged patients."

"Oh." Benwick bit on his lip, chewed on the piercing there.

Lizzie laughed quietly. "It's quite difficult to antagonize someone who distinctly reminds one of a saint, isn't it?"

Darcy rolled his eyes. "Are you still disappointed that you found no hidden abyss? No nefarious intentions? No carefully concealed addictions?"

"I'm still looking," Lizzie mumbled around the stolen strawberry.

"She thought for a long time that I was an alcoholic," he told Benwick conversationally who voiced his agreement with a distracted "hmm" and stared into his tea with a lost expression.

"Recovered alcoholic," Lizzie corrected him. "The constant insistence on drinking 'only water' at parties was kind of a giveaway."

Wentworth scoffed. "Rookie mistake. If you want people to leave you alone then either pour some apple juice into a beer glass or tell them that your coke is really part whiskey." She shrugged, ripped apart a croissant. She looked younger, there in the morning light, her hair not as severely straight, her clothes not as sharp and Lizzie saw Anne's eyes flick back to her and linger there. "If you're lucky they're all already pissed when they think about testing your drink and can differentiate neither smell nor taste anymore."

Darcy frowned. "Is there a reason for your expert knowledge?"

Wentworth arched a brow, half questioningly, half amusedly. "Are too many company parties with compulsory attendance where I do not desire to make a spectacle of myself enough of a reason?"

"Acceptable," Darcy nodded, pointing at Lizzie. "Because otherwise she'd taste blood and act like a wild Yorkshire terrier on the run until one confronts her with the, in most cases, rather _boring_ truth."

"That's what you said," Lizzie chimed in, licking yoghurt from her spoon. "While also implicating that I remind you of a small, yapping dog."

"Well, I simply wanted to beat you to it to spare you the effort of calling me an idiot."

"How generous of you," Lizzie said sarcastically. "Now I'm not only a terrier, but also predictable. What comes next? A dog lead?"

Darcy frowned. "Didn't we already have that conversation? The one with the bells around the neck and Richard's dirty imagination?"

"Wonderful," Lizzie muttered and stood up. "And a Déjà-Vu on the side. Didn't we already clear up the vampire thing?"

"Why? Richard has already –"

She glared at him. "Why don't you just found a little 'Club of the Idiots'? Then you get discounts and perhaps enough donations to hire an expert to heal you of your metaphorical _blindness_." Anne snorted, but Lizzie ignored her. "Because really, why on earth would you think it's a good idea to call your personal, bloodsucking Déjà-Vu a terrier and implicate that a dog lead is needed?"

Benwick sniggered.

"Oh yes," Lizzie hissed. "Because it was such a stroke of a genius to call the object of your little crush a vain airhead with no further ambitions than the next Prada store. Really. _Congratulations_ to that intellectual achievement. You made your prejudices more than clear. _Bravo_."

"Lizzie…" Anne said softly, but the caffeine had kicked in now and the dark-haired girl was at full speed.

"But at least these two dunderheads are still talking!" she continued infuriated, looking from Anne to Wentworth and back again and threw her hands in the air in frustration.

"I'm going to look for Richard," she announced, snagging an apple and marched out of the door, nearly running into Lou who was just about to enter the room.

"What was that about?" the redhead asked, blinking curiously. Four uncomfortable looking faces concentrated on their breakfast or hid – in Darcy's case – behind the newspaper. "I thought we agreed on no explosions before ten o'clock?"

"Richard woke up too early and caught Benwick before he had his first cup of tea," Darcy replied from behind the Feuilleton-part. "The result was… unfortunate."

"That's one way to put it," Wentworth remarked with a small snort.

Anne narrowed her eyes. "He insulted Richard whereupon the man exploded whereupon Darcy said something stupid and Lizzie read everyone the riot act in the second wave." She grumbled. "_Hypocrite_."

"She's not so wrong, you know?" Wentworth was focused on Anne who evaded her intense look with skill. "About the lack of communication."

"We _talk_." Anne turned red. "We talk _all the time_."

"About nothing important!"

The golden eyes flared up. "As if you don't have enough of me already? Heart and soul and… No you want my mind, too? This is not a fucking organ trade and if you-"

"_Déjà-Vu_," Darcy muttered into his newspaper when Lou interrupted the whole drama with a sarcastically breathed "Fascinating" and rolled her eyes.

"And what are you still doing here?" she asked Benwick pointedly who blinked at her over the rim of his tea cup.

"Uhm…" He frowned. "You're not upset?"

"About what? You having a crush on the glittering man?" She grabbed a croissant from the bread basket and flopped down into one of the empty chairs. "What on earth could have clued me in on that little fact? The passive-aggressive flirting? The smouldering looks? Those strange incidents where you both stumble into the bathroom coincidentally when the other one is under the shower? Really, my dear, you're no exactly subtle."

"I'm… _I'm sorry_?" He phrased it like a question and it was almost hilarious how the tattooed man sat there like a little school boy being scolded by his ex-girlfriend.

"What are you still doing here?" she asked him irritated and waved him away with a flick of her hand. "Your Prince Charming is conducting a discussion with that sabre-tooth tiger of a cat in front of the house and really, I can't quite say who is winning."

"Uhm…"

"_Run_!"

"Okay," he squeaked and was out of the door before anyone could even blink.

Lou leaned back in her chair in satisfaction. "I believe that was the easiest break-up I ever had."

* * *

Lizzie felt the restlessness licking at her.

This dance with Darcy – it was more intuition than knowledge, more blind laughing and astounding harmony and it had been good, had been what she'd needed in those first few weeks, but now it felt like they'd simply swept all the dirt under the carpet and built houses without foundation and it itched and bit at her because they were only treading water, moving in circles and –

She spit out all her frustration to Richard's feet, who was sitting on the stone wall overlooking Pemberley's gardens warily watching Mrs Reynolds who was curled on Lizzie's lap, enjoying being petted.

He muttered something about idiots, shook his head and added something else about not being able to expect them to move in any direction and bloody do something when –

Benwick suddenly stormed out of the house, a panicked yet determined expression on his face and Lizzie had to hide her smile and bury her face a bit in Her Majesty's fur when the tattooed man didn't waste any time and before Richard could spit out something biting and potentially dangerous, he cupped his face and kissed him soundly.

Yes, one couldn't really expect it of them.

* * *

"You know, some bird told me that you've developed a sudden interest in leather collars recently." With these words Richard opened the conversation and Lizzie, on her way up to her room through the servants' corridors a few days after the breakfast incident, stopped dead in her tracks at the hidden door to the blue parlour when she heard Darcy answer in an irritated voice.

"I've long since known that there's a songbird lurking around somewhere in your brain and peeping, but so far I'd hoped that it hadn't started talking to you."

"It was more of a butterfly," Richard countered, pausing for a moment. "An angry butterfly. Can butterflies get angry?"

"How am I supposed to discern the emotional state of your hallucinations for heaven's sake? Last week you saw zebras running up and down the driveway and were convinced they were out to get you."

"Small overreaction on my part, I admit," she heard Richard say and sniggered a bit at the memory of Richard running through the house like a headless chicken only because she'd put her feet in Darcy's lap.

"Indeed."

"_Indeed_." A small pause. "But you should have made that particular butterfly's acquaintance already."

"Really?"

"Yes." A humming sound and the rustling of the newspaper. "She sleeps in your bed."

"I thought that was a zebra," Darcy replied wryly and she heard Richard sigh.

"Do you want to compare her to a four-legged animal _again_?" he asked exasperatedly. "Because that one worked out so brilliantly the last you tried it?"

"But you may call her a butterfly?" Darcy asked caustically and she could practically see Richard's grin in front of her.

"She flutters," she heard the glittering man say. "Especially when angry."

"Well," Darcy grumbled and the newspaper rustled again. "If one even knew why for god's sake she's even angry in the first place, that would be pretty darn helpful."

"What? The dog lead didn't clue you in?"

"No! Believe it or not, but fanciful metaphors are not exactly easy to understand when talking to someone who dances like Rumpelstiltskin around their word fire and takes them literally one moment and only figuratively the next, because – _oh my god!_ – the whole world is just a game. Isn't that fucking _funny_?" She heard him ball up the paper and throw it in a corner.

"Darcy, you know very well that she's only –"

"What? Provoking?" She heard him laughing bitterly and it tugged on something in her chest. "Of course I know that. She provokes and provokes and provokes to find out how long it takes until I snap and strike and we both know that I won't, but she… _God_, Richard, you didn't see her cower against that wall when you get too close and I can't… I _can't_-"

"But she sleeps in your bed," Richard insisted.

"Yes and the whole time I'm bloody terrified of her having another panic attack and if not then –"

"-then you realise that there's a woman in your bed," Richard chuckled. "God, I would have loved to see your face when that fact finally hit you."

"Believe me," Darcy grumbled. "I know it. I don't need to see more skimpy shorts and oversized, high riding T-Shirts to be aware of that fact and that is saying something when talking about someone who already believes underwear to be optional."

"Optional? How the fuck is underwear-" Richard stopped abruptly and Lizzie assumed that Darcy had silenced him with a glare.

"Well," the glittering man said after a while in mockingly pitying tone. "Don't get me wrong, but is your problem that you do not know what to do with a woman who is lying in your bed and believes underwear to be optional?"

"Richard…"

"Because I know it's been a while for you, but really-"

"_Richard_!"

"- the mechanics haven't changed much and I'm pretty sure the book about the birds and bees is still flying around somewhere… Didn't you try to explain the facts of life to Giana with that one? God, that was one holy catastrophe if I ever saw one!"

"I don't need any-" Darcy broke off. "Richard, it doesn't matter whether or not – She is… Lizzie is not… not yet and I won't force her… No," he then said. "I won't."

"Aha," Richard hummed, nearly tasting the sound on his tongue. "And this plan of yours… doing exactly nothing at all… does that operate in a particular time frame or are you just very… spontaneous?"

"What are you on about?" Darcy sounded exasperated and Lizzie didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or scream in frustration.

"Oh, just so that I can pencil it in my calendar. Because if the whole thing explodes in your hands as it's so often the case, I want a front row seat and enough popcorn ready to enjoy telling you that I fucking knew it."

A pause.

"For heaven's sake," Darcy called out in aggravated resignation. "Five minutes with the guy you've been nagging like a sullen fishwife for a week and you radiate such smugness, it's nauseating."

"Yes," Richard nodded, smirk audible in his voice. "He is rather incredible."

"_Oh God_…"

"Tsst… I have a name, you know?" Lizzie heard that smirk grow wider. "I still have to teach it to Benwick, though. He mistakes me quite often with various persons from Christian mythology."

Something that sounded like a choked whimper was the only answer he got.

"Because you know what, Darcy? The thing about the optional underwear?"

"Richard!"

"I, unlike you, take _advantage_ of that little fact…"

Richard's resounding laughter and the sound of the shutting door when Darcy stormed out of the parlour, muttering curses under his breath, left Lizzie alone with a pounding heart on the other side of the painted silk tapestry and all she could think was:

"_Fuck_."

* * *

When Anne saw the expression in Lizzie's eyes when the girl stomped into her room shortly after, her mouth popped open and a shock choked "_Oh no_!" fell out of it along with the cookie.

There was a number of rather terrifying expression that could take on the role of forerunners of national catastrophes on Lizzie Bennet's face and while a mischievous glint could end in complete destruction, defiance in outright blockade and bad moods in tempests lasting up to three days, it was sullen determination that rose the paranoia in Anne because once that girl had put something into her brain, there was nothing in the world stopping her.

It was just so bloody difficult to find out what exactly she'd put in that skull of hers.

"Lizzie?" the amber girl asked carefully when Lizzie started rummaging in her wardrobe, muttering barely comprehensible curses under her breath.

"Optional," she hissed, throwing something flimsy with lace on the carpet next to her. "I'll show him optional that patronising, oh so omniscient _arsehole_!"

Something equally flimsy in red joined the black lace and Anne gingerly picked up the underwear.

"Acts like I'm made of porcelain!" she heard her friend hiss and Anne's expression grew pained.

"Lizzie… can you please explain to me why you're digging out underwear you haven't worn in over a year?"

Lizzie glared at her. "You put it in my luggage."

"It's not like there'd been alternatives," Anne replied, shaking her head in the face of these mere scraps of fabric. "And I love you, Lizzie, but I'm not buying lingerie for you." She grimaced in slight disgust. "That would be just too weird."

"What, you won't buy me knickers?" Lizzie pouted. "I'm hurt."

Anne raised an eyebrow. "As neurotic as you are concerning that particular topic?" She shuddered. "I still remember quite clearly your last tirade about the pointlessness of padded bras and your conspiracy theories concerning diabolic ribbons meant to choke you to last me a lifetime."

"Suspender belts are worse," Lizzie grumbled.

"Well, if that's the case," Anne replied with a sigh and flicked her fingers against the pile of lace. "Then you should ask Richard for some knickers."

Lizzie cast her a sceptical glance. "I want to drive Darcy mad not inflict mental trauma upon myself." A shake of the head when Anne tried opening her mouth. "Another reason why I won't enter that room. I thought the detonations were bad, but someone should really tell those two lovebirds that repeatedly slamming a bed against a wall isn't that much quieter."

"Lizzie, why don't we get back to the part where you want to drive Darcy mad?" the amber girl tried again futilely. "Because I thought we were talking about salad dressings and careful approaches, not –"

"Lou!" Lizzie cried out as if she hadn't heard her at all and jumped to her feet. "I bet Lou has something that doesn't remind me of a wildlife Boa Constrictor."

"-active destruction," Anne finished her sentence with a sigh. "_Oh heaven help us now_."

* * *

Anne wasn't only to beg for heavenly assistance in the next few days. When Lizzie turned up in Darcy's room that very evening wearing a slip of a silk shirt and shorts, it took an impressive amount of willpower to keep the poor man from gaping openly.

Lizzie simply arched an eyebrow, daring him to say something with a defiant lift of her chin.

"You…uhm…" He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a second. "What happened to the Zombie T-Shirt?"

"I was hot," Lizzie replied a bit spitefully and stalked over to the bed where she curled up on the other side. "Contrary to some people."

Darcy's sigh when he pulled her towards him was the last thing Lizzie heard before sleep caught up with her.

* * *

"Well, Lizzie," Lou said a few days later from where she was sitting on the huge window seat in the sky-blue room that was hers for the stay. Benwick had quickly moved into Richard's room after the incident that would go down in history as 'The Great Breakfast Fiasco' and the rest of the manor's occupants had quickly gotten used to keeping a stash of ear plugs in their bedside tables. "It's all fine and dandy, not to mention highly entertaining watching you raid my wardrobe, but don't you think you're overdoing it a bit?"

Lizzie's head emerged from the depths of the wardrobe for a second before she snorted and disappeared between the clothes again.

"This is an intervention, Lizzie," Anne interjected with a firm voice, fingers clenched around her cup of tea.

"Bite me," Lizzie snarled from somewhere in that wardrobe. Giana giggled softly.

"Look!" Lou called out. "That's what this is about. I don't want to bite you, Anne also has no desire whatsoever to do so, but we all know someone who wants to and by the way you're acting, you also want to be-"

"- bitten?" Giana asked, grimacing. "I really didn't need to know that."

Lizzie held up a black demi corsage. "Your point?" she asked.

"That you won't get him to bite you that way," Lou snapped, rolling her eyes while Giana choked out a horrified "Oh god". "Have you seen the man lately? He looks like a bloody doe caught in the headlights of some giant monster truck racing directly at him with about a hundred miles per hour."

Lizzie tilted her head to the side. "Why do I always have four legs in those similes? Really, this is more than insulting," she grumbled and hid in the wardrobe again as if she could find the way to Narnia if she only crawled far enough.

"Perhaps," Giana began. "Perhaps you should simply try talking to him?"

"Oh that's a funny one," Lizzie barbed. "He talks and I talk and still… nothing happens."

"Perhaps because you're not talking about the important things?" Lou remarked with a good dash of sarcasm mixed into the words and rolled her eyes again.

"Well, my brother isn't much of a talker," Giana interjected cautiously with a hesitant glance at Anne who nodded encouragingly.

"You don't say," Lizzie muttered, but forced a smile when she saw Giana shrink back at the jibe. "It's fine, Princess."

"What I mean is…," Giana stammered with a slightly panicked expression. "That he… that he… talks _differently_. "

"You mean non-verbally?" Anne cut in helpfully, handing Giana a cup of tea.

"Well, as you can see that works out quite wonderfully," Lizzie scoffed and held up the corsage again.

"That's because…" Giana's voice became more hectic. "Because you confuse him. _You're_ confusing and he… he doesn't know how to sort you and after all that happened he's just super careful and-"

"He told you?" Lizzie cut in sharply and Giana jerked back while Anne tried to save the situation with a soft "Hey!".

"Not everything," the Darcy-girl assured her with wide, honest eyes. "Only that he hurt you and that you needed time to… to heal."

Lizzie visibly relaxed at that. "Okay," she said almost tonelessly. "And what gives you the idea that…" She waved her hand.

"Because he was the same with me," Giana said quietly. "After… after I learned the truth…about Wickham and the accident," her voice stumbled and broke at the words and Anne made a sound somewhere between a '_No'_ and '_Shhht'_, but Giana collected herself and gulped, "when he visited me on the weekends when I was in therapy, he was so overtly careful and polite and I… I just wanted him to yell at me, to be angry that my stupidity caused him to loose Emily and the baby, but he… he didn't and…" She took a few trembling breaths and Lizzie cast Anne a helpless look, but the amber girl just looked at her seriously and pointed at Giana with a lift of her chin.

With a sigh Lizzie dropped the corsage and kneeled in front of the sobbing girl. "Hey…," she cooed softly. "_Shht_… Come on, it's okay…" She cupped Giana's face with both hands and forced the girl to look her in the eyes. "We all did stupid things when we were seventeen-"

"Yeah," Lou chimed in helpfully, spitting out some cookie crumbs. "I for one thought it a jolly good idea to take of my shirt on stage in a karaoke bar."

"Lou, you still think it a jolly good idea to take of your shirt in karaoke bars," Anne countered with an eye roll. The red-haired girl just grinned.

"And she's eighteen," Lizzie remarked amusedly while wiping tears from Giana's cheeks. "The decisions you made at that age are not a precedent for the rest of your life, okay? Because we-" She shot a look at Anne. "We're not seventeen anymore."

Giana smiled hesitantly and Lizzie let go of her with a sigh.

"So what now? Do I have to do more heartfelt declarations of my feelings and bare my mind to the world?"

The other three girls just stared at her. "That might be a start…," Lou said slowly as if she had to repeat it for the hearing impaired in the last row.

Lizzie grimaced and threw the corsage back into the wardrobe. "How delightful. When did we all turn into cannibals anyway?"

* * *

Lizzie Bennt had never thought that she'd miss direct communication one day.

She'd also never thought that simple words could turn her into a stuttering, awkward teenager with burning cheeks who seeks refuge in the library only to find more words, this time on paper that stitch up her throat with surgical precision.

"Of course I want her!" she'd heard him shout, again through the thin door leading to the servants' corridors and she'd known it had been a stupid idea to take that route again and listen.

A really _stupid_ idea.

"Do you think it's easy when she walks around in the spring collection of _Victoria's_ damn _Secret_ only to prove some ridiculous point?"

"You think she's doing this to prove something?" That had been Richard, still smug and still smirking. "Goodness, Darcy, why don't you just bloody snog her and save us all from this misery?"

"Because she's important!" Darcy had thundered and her heart had almost stopped beating at that. "Because I did that once before and it turned into a bloody mindfuck and this time it has to be her own bloody _decision_!"

"Oh Bravo," Richard had congratulated him. "And why don't you just go all mushy and tell her that you adore the sight of her? That you still love her?"

She'd run at those words, up the stairs and three corridors down until she'd arrived at the library and had been able to breathe again.

"Son of a bitch," she whispered without any malice while her fingers traced the scribbled words on paper. It wasn't… it wasn't particular _good_ poetry, but it was still _poetry_. About her. Lizzie.

"Fuck," she muttered. "Why can't he just be an idiot?"

Her eyes fell on the small, silver iPod that had been resting on the papers on one of the side tables in the library and almost choked when she recognized her own playlist.

"_Fuck_."

* * *

"There," Lizzie said when she stepped on to the terrace where Darcy was sitting. It was a warm, sunny day, so rare for springtime in Derbyshire, but the warmth felt good in skin and bones and rose even the last cells from their winter slumber.

She handed him her journal, tattered pages and scratched leather, wrapped by a strand of ribbons and he raised an eyebrow in silent question when he took it from her.

"I… I found your poems," she said softly, three fingers of her left hand nervously dancing against his shoulder. "In the library. Your iPod was there, too and I…"

She saw him blush a bit and felt her own cheeks burn. "I thought it would only be… fair if you… read my stuff."

Darcy's eyes grew wide, flickered between her and the book. "Why the tape?" he asked while his fingers ran over the pages that were stuck together by a bit of sellotape.

"Those were about Matthew. I didn't know if you wanted to read them. You can of course, but… the other ones… they're new."

He looked and she worried her bottom lip. "The anxiety," she said and her fingers fluttered like a butterfly's wing against the soft skin between shoulder and neck. "It comes and goes, you know? Some days I can control it and on others it consumes me, but I… I'm not broken, okay? I'm not deficient, not made of… porcelain."

"Okay." He took her fingers, pressed a kiss against the still trembling tips. "Okay."

* * *

"All right, guys!" Lou shouted excitedly and clapped her hands. "Are your glasses full? Do I have to explain the rules again or did you all get it?"

"We're not preschool kids, Lou," Wentworth replied with an eye roll. "And you repeated them three times already – our short term memory is working just fine, you know?"

"Oh well, I didn't want to make assumptions about anyone's mental health status here," Lou said sweetly and Wentworth narrowed her eyes.

Anne sighed.

They were all sitting in a circle on the carpet in the blue parlour, rows of shot glasses lined up in front of each of them (Darcy's had been filled with water on Lizzie's insistence) and waited for Lou to begin. The red-haired girl had first insisted on playing 'Spin the Bottle', but Lizzie and Anne had been able to discourage her by mentioning the awkwardness that would result since half of the present company were either related to or had been or presently were in a relationship with each other.

Thank goodness.

"Okay!" Lou clapped her hands again. "Let's start with… Never have I ever… _used flavoured condoms_." She, Benwick and Richard drank up.

"If that's a taste of what's to come, I don't want to know how it ends," Darcy muttered in Lizzie's ear. "Really, there are things I don't want to know about my baby sister."

"Hey," Anne interrupted the both of them. "I remember Charlotte's birthday present from last year, Lizzie. So drink up!"

Lizzie glared at Anne playfully. "If I remember correctly, I gave them to you after you practically begged me at Ed's and Maddie's party around the same time. Something about how much you like strawberries."

Anne turned beet-red. "I was drunk," she muttered, reaching for her glass.

"Upon closer inspection," Darcy remarked quietly, "I think there also a few things I didn't want to know about Anne either."

Lizzie sniggered and pointed at Wentworth who looked stricken. "Looks like it's my turn now…" She squinted. "Never have I ever… _had sex while other people where in the room_."

"Ohoho!" Richard cried out and knocked back his glass with much noise, but Lizzie looked intently at Anne until the other girl closed her eyes and reached for her glass.

"Anne?" Lou's disbelieving shout was loud and the rest of the group also stared at the amber girl in astonishment.

"Same party," she brushed it off. "There was a second level with sofas in that house and – _technically_ it was in the same room."

"And how do _you_ know that?" Giana asked a grinning Lizzie with wide eyes, but the other girl only mimicked locking her mouth and shrugged.

"Puppeteer," Darcy whispered with a glance at Wentworth and Lizzie's smirk turned mischievous.

"Do it better," she dared him.

"Let me see… Never have I ever _kissed someone of my own gender_," he announced, surprising everyone when he knocked back his glass in time with the rest of the group.

"_Darcy_?" Now it was on Lizzie to be completely flabbergasted and while Richard squealed, Lou and Anne leaned in with interest and Giana turned red, the man in question simply shrugged and grinned a bit.

"It was a bet. Richard announced that he could have anyone he wanted, I countered and had to prove that I was just as good as he is."

"Why don't I remember that?" Richard whined desperately and wrung his hands. Benwick just laughed.

"Because that very same evening after I dragged your pathetic arse home, you fell into bed completely clothed, sucked on your thumb and sighed '_Mummy'_," Darcy replied wryly.

Richard pouted. "And what about you, little Darcy?" he asked his cousin who was still shuddering from the Vodka she'd ingested.

She raised an eyebrow and the expression reminded Lizzie so much of her older brother it was astounding. "I'm no novice to drinking games, you know? And I _did_ attend an all-girls school. What did you think would happen?"

"You shouldn't have told him that," Lou sniggered and at Giana's questioning glance, Lizzie explained, "Because now he's imagining the plot to 'Dirty Schoolgirls on the Loose' and will probably gift you various sex toys on your birthdays."

"_Oh god_-"

A diabolic smile had spread on Richard's lips. "Only to support our dear little Gigi on the path she's chosen to-"

A pillow smacking him square in the face kept him from finishing that sentence and Benwick only shook his head in amusement when Richard glared at him infuriated.

"No you won't," the tattooed man calmly announced. "Because every time I see that expression on your face I'll throw something in your stupid face."

"Do you really want to do that?" Richard asked with a sly look on his face. "You don't know about all the things I'm thinking about when looking like that. I wouldn't want to deprive you…"

"If it keeps you from thinking at all, that would be new," Benwick said dryly, smoothing Richard's hair down into a semblance of order. "Because, dear god, believe me you give the word 'multi-tasking' a whole new meaning."

"But really-," Richard started to protest, but was interrupted by Giana's confession.

"Never have I ever… _had a mental blackout due to alcohol_," she practically yelled into the room and pushed away her glass.

Lizzie, Richard, Lou and Benwick drank up and even Wentworth emptied her glass.

"Wasn't that something about pineapples and kitchen counters?" Darcy asked Lizzie quietly, who laughed outright and almost choked on her Vodka. "Shht," she simply whispered, pressing her forehead against his shoulder.

"Anne?" Giana asked her cousin curiously who was grinning proudly.

"I never have blackouts," she announced with satisfaction and Lizzie groaned. "She never lets us forget," she mumbled into Darcy's shirt. "Do you know how bad it is when someone reiterates in all detail the stupid things you did the night before? And is all gleeful and chipper about it?"

"No," Darcy laughed and pulled her on his lap. "I have no idea."

"So does that mean you perform all your drunken debauchery in full control of your mental faculties since you seem to repeat them despite remembering them?" Wentworth asked caustically.

"I'm not going to apologise for the way I live," Anne said stiffly.

"No," Wentworth bit back and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "You never did."

"Hey!" Lizzie yelled out angrily, but Darcy held her back with a whispered "Let them dance".

"Oh really?" Anne asked, her golden eyes flared up and she reached for the tray with the shot glasses. "Let's see. Never have I ever… _kissed exactly two girls in my life_." She emptied the glass, her eyes fixed unrelentingly on the raven girl. "Never have I ever… _almost gotten my head smashed in by my own mother_." She gulped down the contents of the next glass. "Never have I ever… _loved someone to the brink of madness._" And another glass fell victim to her fury. "And last, but not least… Never have I ever… _lied_." She pushed the tray away from her and glared at Wentworth with crossed arms from the other side of the room. "Believe me, I will still remember this tomorrow."

Wentworth looked like she was going to be sick.

"Okay…," Richard cut through the silence. "How about… Never have I ever… _worn latex_?"

The question worked like a snapped rubber band and in the ensuing murmur, a satisfied Lizzie whispered into Darcy's ear.

"_And oh, how they danced_."

* * *

The tense atmosphere eased up a bit at that and after a few more rounds it turned from drunkenly boisterous to drunkenly tired and Lizzie who hadn't moved out of Darcy's arms and only nuzzled her nose deeper into his shoulder and traced the lines in his palms with one finger, made a soft noise of protest when Darcy stood up and announced the end of the evening.

He woke up Giana who'd fallen asleep on the carpet and only blinked when Richard who seemed surprisingly sober escorted her up to her room while Benwick, also not showing any effects of the alcohol, did the same for Lou.

Anne had curled up in one of the chairs at some point and Wentworth lingered in the room, seemingly reluctant to go. Lizzie cast her a last "Don't fuck this up"- glare and pulled Darcy out of the room.

"I don't wanna go to sleep," Lizzie whispered when they stood in the hallway and he nodded, frowning.

"We could…," he said. "We could go down to the lake."

"That- … Okay."

"Okay."

* * *

"Why can't you just accept that I'm sorry?! I tried telling you that for weeks now, but you're always running from me!"

Lizzie had known that it was a stupid idea to take the servants' corridors bypassing the blue parlour to get back to their room after their midnight stroll, but apparently it only took some pretty fishes swimming around her feet while she bounced through the littoral zone to cause her mental instability.

Darcy, standing behind her with equally wet feet, also looked rather lost in the gloomy light of the rather sparse lamps in the corridor and winced when Anne's half choked voice was audible through the thin wall.

"And that only shows that I simply don't want to talk about it with you!"

"We fucking can't go on like this!" That was Wentworth, sounding just as desperate as Anne. "I want back what we had if that wasn't… painfully obvious, but everything I've tried ends with you running away and today I hear about your numerous escapades and wonder if you even suffered after I –"

"I didn't suffer? You went to Israel for that damn correspondent job and I-"

"You went back to your mother!"

"I was seventeen!" Lizzie heard her sobbing and let out a mewling sound, hand on the door, ready to push it open, but Darcy held her back.

"Let them dance," he whispered.

"I was seventeen!" Anne protested again. "And I had no idea whatsoever about the world and how it worked. I seldom got out of that cursed house, not to mention the grounds surrounding it. So I'm bloody fucking sorry if I was unsure, if I wavered! I was taught that family is the most important thing in the world, that I am an abnormity for who I love and you… You proved it…"

"How… I-"

"You didn't even wait long enough to give me time to rethink my decision and if you… If you could leave so quickly… How long did you plan it? The job in Israel, the plane ticket, how…"

"There were two tickets," Wentworth whispered so quietly that Lizzie could barely understand her.

"Oh _god_!" Anne's voice broke and she heard her cry.

"Anne…" The raven girl sounded desperate. "I… I'm sorry it happened so quickly, I just couldn't… I never thought that you'd –"

"What? Actually rebel against my mother?" Anne snorted a bit under her soft sobbing. "Don't get any ideas, I didn't do it because of you. Don't you dare think that I ran away from home out of rebellion, locked myself away in Lyme, don't believe that I did it for you or because of you or even thought of you when sleeping with men and kissing women."

"I…" Wentworth sounded unsure. "This is not the first time I'm back in England."

"Pardon me?"

"Eight years ago. I came back because my grandmother died and I… I thought about calling you, but didn't and… Would you – If I'd called, would you have-"

"Yes," Anne said quietly. "I would have."

"Oh, Anne I –"

"Don't you dare!" The voice was bitter and serious. "Wentworth, just leave it."

"But why should I? You tell me you would have forgiven me then and now you refuse to talk about it? What's the point of this fucking cat-and-mouse-game, Anne? Because you know that I still lo-"

"Stop, _just bloody stop_!" Anne almost sounded hysterical. "I did this once and I won't let it happen again. You were everything, Wentworth. _Everything_. And you threw it all away and now you demand of me to cut me open again? The scars are finally healed and I fucking won't let you slice me up again!"

"Anne!"

"No, I-"

They heard the muffled sound of a collision and the rustling of clothes. "I can't," Anne whispered under tears. "Please, I can't do this again –"

"I got you, please, Anne, please, don't go…"

"I don't know, I can't, I –"

"Please_… I love you, I love you, I love_-"

"- … you."

* * *

When, after a few moments of absolute silence, Lizzie opened the door again she saw the two of them wrapped around each other on one of the sofas and she blinked back the tears as she closed the door again quickly with a soft "Oh" and a lump in her throat.

"We should go," Darcy said gently with a light glint in his eyes. "They've danced enough."

Lizzie let out a choked laughter. "Yes… I believe they did."

She gazed at Darcy, how he stood there in the warm if weak light and she felt this dangerous warmth spread in her chest – affection and… more – and she suddenly realised that it finally was okay to show it, to make herself vulnerable and –

She kissed him.

There, in that sparse corridor between the important rooms of the manor, with her bare feet wet from the lake water and a lightness in bones and body that made her dizzy, she kissed him and –

He blinked, looked at her in wonder.

A breath, a heartbeat –

And he kissed her back. Hands, pressed against the wall to both sides of her head, slid down until they combed through hair, rested on her waist, pulled her closer.

It were trembling fingers against soft skin, butterfly wings, hands growing warm when held and she opened her mouth, tasted teeth and tongue and the rest citron from those virgin tequila shots and it was like coming home.

Was realising you're already there.

And so they stood there, two fluttering hearts in the semi-darkness, hands and bodies woven into each other, skin sewn together and –

Somewhere in the house, a phone rang.

A breath, two, a heartbeat.

And then they all rang.

* * *

**A/N: Much love to all the people in Brussels and Ankara. My heart aches with you. Teddy  
**


	34. Chapter 33 Knifesharpening for Beginners

**A/N: Much love from a very sunny Germany. I haven't been... emotionally okay these fast few weeks so I'm very, very sorry for missing any reviews. You're all very much loved and appreciated.**

**Warning: Sensitive subjects and people being... not very morally good at times? Opinions don't necessarily reflect my own.**

**Soundtrack: Famous Last Words &amp; I Don't Love You by My Chemical Romance**

**Disclaimer: Craig's mine.**

* * *

**Chapter 33: Knifesharpening for Beginners**

_("Lizzie, it's about Lydia. There was a car accident, she… she's in the hospital and – god, Lizzie, they don't know if she'll make it, she-") _

It was the acidic smell in hospitals that Lizzie hated the most.

It may be a strange thing to say for someone studying medicine and planning to spend at least a significant part of their life in such an institution, but the mix of disinfectants and what they suppressed never afflicted her as much when she was the one working and running down those hallways.

It was the helplessness that made it beyond all bearing.

_("Just wait a second, will you, Lizzie? Calm down and tell me what's wrong." – "I can't, they'll be here soon and I have to pack, I have to-" – She almost choked on her own breath while stumbling down the staircase. – "She's in the hospital and it's my fault and I have to go to her, I can't – Let me go! Let me the fuck go!")_

"You're back again."

She didn't look up, didn't look to the side. What are you supposed to do with hallucinations that refused to disappear? Dance with them? Simply ignore them?

We all live in our head, she remembered the words of her professor for medical psychology. All that we see is reality and we – pretentious people that we are – draw the line almost arbitrarily between normality and what we call illness.

We _create_ illness. But we're not omniscient.

"And you're still here." She looked straight ahead when he sat down next to her on the hard plastic seats in the waiting area and flicked the ash from the tip of his cigarette.

"That's debatable." She heard him grin. "And you can't prove it."

She closed her eyes briefly. "You were much easier persuade when you were baked."

"One of the disadvantages of being dead." He blew out smoke in rings around his head. "Mind-altering substances tend to have no effect on you. Must be the lack of biological basis."

"But talking's fine? You'd be every reductionist's very personal heart attack."

"Aren't they all long dead? Automatization dealt them a death blow quite a while ago, didn't it?"

"They all killed each other," Lizzie snorted, eyes focused on the news feed on the television screen.

"Hmm. A massacre. How nice," Craig remarked and Lizzie lifted her eyes from the screen where a cool reporter talked about an attack in Tunisia with 39 deaths.

She looked at him. His hair was back to chin length, curly and dishevelled and he still wore that same combination consisting of a green parka and grey sweatshirt he used to practically sleep in, but something was different, as if he'd grown taller, stronger, warmer – no matter how scatterbrained it sounded to be saying that about a ghost.

Or the product of one's fantasy.

"Will she make it?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

Craig shrugged, took another drag from his cigarette. "I don't know," he said, blowing smoke in her face. "Do you want her to?"

_(How teeth burn themselves into lips, bleeding, they left dents and she could still taste him on her tongue long after the car left the drive way, disappearing into the pitch black night.)_

"Coffee?"

Lizzie blinked and with a small groan, she lifted her head from the hard chair she slept on. Anne looked down at her from where she was sitting, curled up on Wentworth's lap, just as crinkled from tiredness and the long journey as Lizzie and blinked owlishly as she handed her the cup.

It tasted like diluted battery acid.

"Any news?" she asked. The waiting area at Rosings was completely deserted at this time of day, only the flickering TV-screen on the wall evoked the illusion of not complete isolation, but old Bugs Bunny cartoons didn't help much in that regard.

"They're still operating," Anne said quietly and pushed back some stray hairs. "There were some complications when they tried to stop the inner bleeding, but the nurse says the new surgeon has is all under control."

"Shit," Lizzie cursed, rubbing the angry red line on her cheek where the edge of the chair had pressed into her skin. "Do my parents already know-"

"Lizzie?"

Her mother looked younger without make-up. She'd thrown a winter coat over a hastily put together skirt and blouse combination and apparently managed to pull the curlers out of her hair before entering the car, but together with her nervous hand wringing and lip biting she looked almost… vulnerable.

"Mum…" Lizzie didn't know what to say. The Bennets had arrived shortly after her, Anne and Wentworth, but spent the past hour pestering the receptionist and senior nurse officer in order to get an interview with the operating surgeon, while the three of them had instead preferred to wait in front of the OR and use Anne's and Lizzie's combined influence to be kept updated.

"Mrs Bennet," Anne chimed in, putting forth her hand in greeting. Lizzie still rubbed her eyes and tasted salt on her tongue. "How sad to be meeting under such circumstances, you have my heartfelt sympathy. I'm Anne and this is Wentworth."

"Hello, Mrs Bennet." The raven girl, too, reached out her hand and smiled sweetly. Lizzie's mother greeted them both politely, but frowned at the intimate position of the two girls.

"Yes, Mum," Lizzie bit out sarcastically over the rim of her cup. "They're a couple. Such things _do exist_."

"Oh, I know," Mrs Bennet said and blushed. "Very nice. Like those girls in that series, the one Kitty's always watching. Where they're all in prison. Even though I have to say that you don't really look like typical Amazons."

Lizzie stared at her mother. "Oh god," she then said with barely concealed terror and rubbed her eyes tiredly. "That didn't just happen. I'm dreaming. Or I'm dead. Anne, you know the inscription I want on my gravestone. Because this here…" She waved her hand a bit woozily while standing up in a clumsy manner. "This is so high on the bizarreness-scale, I'm wondering why the world didn't implode yet."

Anne giggled quietly when Lizzie walked away towards the nurses' desks. "Lizzie!" she heard her mother call and the hastily clacking steps told her that she'd caught up with her.

"Where are you going, child!" her mother called out. "You're running again!"

"I just want to ask how Lydia's doing," Lizzie forced herself to say between clenched teeth and tried to be faster than the lady with the pearl necklace.

An endeavour that, much to her chagrin, did not succeed.

"They say you were in Meryton," her mother said and it was that inflexion – that sudden break from shrill and annoying to quiet and vulnerable – that had Lizzie stumble. Yet, she didn't say anything, instead she snagged one of the charts lying around on the unmanned desk and thumbed through the pages.

"Mrs Goulding saw you walking across the meadow behind the Cavanaugh's house and called quite excitedly, asking if you were home again," Mrs Bennet continued.

"So that she can arrange yet another witch hunt?" Lizzie muttered caustically and frowned when she read through the records, the notes about the medication used when Lydia first arrived at the hospital and she felt her stomach do a flip or two backwards when she read how many times her sister had to be revived on the way here. "Tell her not to forget the hors d'oeuvre, burning people makes you hungry."

"Don't be absurd, Lizzie," her mother scolded her. "Alice Goulding wouldn't be so upset by far if you just apologized to that poor boy-"

"Shht…" She held up a hand, one finger marking the note she'd been reading. "Ethan!" she called out to one of the male nurses passing by. "What the hell are these notes about?" she asked with a glance at the strange abbreviations behind the list of medications, Lydia had been given previous to surgery.

"Lizzie, you do know that you have no business reading that, don't you?" he asked and reached for the clipboard.

"Yes, go on?" She waved her hand impatiently while Mrs Bennet kept scolding her for her manners.

Ethan laughed out. "That means that the doctor prescribing those meds is not working for the hospital. And that one," he pointed to a small star in the right corner, "that just means that the orders were given telephonically."

"Telephonically," Lizzie repeated. "Who for heaven's sake is giving orders on my sister's treatment telephonically? I thought Mykert was doing the surgery?"

"Can't tell you, darling. I wasn't here when they first brought her in. As far as I know that only happens when families have some illustrious doctors flown in to treat their loved ones."

"Did you engage someone?" Lizzie asked her mother who was looking wide-eyed from her to Ethan and then frowned.

"Why should we do something like that, dear? Lady DeBourgh herself assured us many times how safe Lydia is here, that she's in good hands and that they'll do everything in their power to – Lizzie! Stop running away from me, you ridiculous child, that is not-"

"Your daughter," Lizzie hissed abruptly, "won't be _in good hands_ until they've pumped her stomach and the rest of that poison has left her body and believe me, they can only do that once they've patched together all those organs she's scattered across the bloody asphalt after stumbling, _high as a fucking kite_ on a busy street during rush hour because maybe there was a bloody bird there and singing!" Mrs Bennet grew pale and clutched her pearls. "And when they've managed to do that, then pray to god that she wakes up again and didn't receive any permanent brain damage due to the crash or that shite in her body, if indeed she even does wake up!"

"But… She's your sister, Lizzie…," Mrs Bennet stammered.

"Why do you think I'm here in the first place?" Lizzie looked aghast. "You still don't understand why I don't come home, do you?"

"You've put it in your head that-"

"Mum, stop it!" She held up both hands to cease listening to that utter nonsense her mother was sprouting. "Do you know why went to Meryton?"

Her mother opened her mouth but didn't get to say anything.

"So that I could tell Cavanaugh where his son is buried."

_("Why don't you just call him?" Anne's face glowed in the red-orange light of the street lamps while they drove through London. "You're staring at your phone all the time. If you want to talk to him, then just do it." – Lizzie shook her head, gulped. "Can't," she whispered. "He was right.")_

"The glass pane tastes good, I take it?"

Lizzie jerked back a bit and lifted her head from the window glass of the vending machine that had held her upright during her momentary nodding off.

"Passably," she muttered, throwing in some coins.

"You don't really want to buy those chocolate bars, do you?" He sounded horrified. "Look, there are Skittles and KitKats and-"

"I will not eat Skittles," Lizzie interrupted, eyes focused on the turning metal spiral while the chocolate Craig so abhorred dropped down. "My mother's already sentimental enough, she could get the idea to cuddle me if I start acting like six-year old me."

"Did you ever stop?" Craig asked her and, with a touch of defiance, she ripped open the wrapping and took a bite.

He grimaced. "Apparently not."

"It's not like you could keep me from doing it," Lizzie grumbled. "Incorporeal as you are."

"Oh, darling, didn't you learn anything from the Chinese? Psychological torture is much more effective than all that blood and torn bowels.

"Well, but brain washing only works in a group context," Lizzie replied. "And as far as I can see, you're pretty much alone."

"What makes you so sure about that?" He grinned mischievously with just a hint of teeth, a silent reminder that he could bite.

"I know you," she countered a bit mockingly and raised both brows. "Or did, at least. God, you don't just want to kill of all philosophers, but the language theorists, too, right?"

"You got me." He leaned against the vending machine, tracing the grid in the window glass. "A little bloodbath always lifts the mood."

He grinned at Lizzie, but she was focused on his finger and the question whether or not he could reach through that glass. His grin became wolfish.

"Should I put physicists on the list, too?" he asked softly. "I could, you know? Depends on you and what you want. It's your head, Lizzie."

She blinked.

"I want you to do that trick where you hit on some parts of the vending machine, grin and then get exactly the thing you wanted without paying for it," she whispered. "I want my sister not to be in that OR with almost as much poison injected into her body as yours held and have to fight for her life. I don't want to go to yet another funeral."

"_Zydrate comes in a little glass vial,_" Craig murmured quietly and smiled. Lizzie let herself sag against the machine, pressing her forehead against the glass.

"_A little glass vial_?" she asked with a smile that tasted like salt.

"_A little glass vial_." He nodded. "_And when the gun goes off, it sparks and you're ready for a surgery_."

"_Surgery_," she whispered. "_Surgery_."

_(She called him when they were at the hospital and she felt like she couldn't breathe. There were shadows in the corners and she thought they were reaching for her. But when she sneaked away, to one of those empty hallways, all she could reach was his voicemail. She called another three times just to hear his voice.)_

"Jane?"

For a moment she thought the pale, blonde figure in the doorway to be Craig, but there was a distinct noise around her, the white static of Nirvana fading for the moment and when she blinked she saw her sister's bright blue eyes in front of her and flung her arms around her neck.

"Jane!" she cried out and breathed in deeply, relieved that there was someone else there who knew how to control Mrs Bennet at least a little. Anne and Wentworth did admittedly listen to her alleged tolerance of 'alternative lifestyles' with barely concealed amusement and the amber girl tried having a theological discussion about the sort of life she'd be leading in hell, but even their patience was at an end at some point and Lizzie couldn't hold it against them.

She had a headache herself from the shrill inflexion of her mother's voice with which she assured them of her purported open-mindedness. Her father just sat there the whole time either reading his book or blinking around owlishly as if he barely knew where he was.

"Lizzie…" Jane's delicate, manicured fingers ran over her cheeks like feathers as if she could barely believe that she was here. "Lizzie, my Lizzie…"

"Where have you been, Jane?" Lizzie asked and held her sister's hand who still looked at her as if she was afraid she'd disintegrate to smoke and mirrors at any moment.

The blonde woman blinked. "There were hints that Wickham was staying in Bristol. We thought Lydia was with him, but apparently he left her in that shitehole of an apartment-" She spit out another onslaught of precisely chosen curses that had Lizzie's eyebrows shoot towards her hairline before she took a breath. "I'm listed as Lydia's emergency contact, but it took us forever to get out of Bristol, traffic was atrocious, I tell you. The-"

"Wait a second," Lizzie interrupted her, the ghost of smile playing around her lips. "_Us_?"

Jane blushed and nodded towards the entrance where Charles Bingley was just brushing a bit of invisible lint and some raindrops from his coat and greeting the Bennet's with his usual charm.

Lizzie tilted her head to the side, glanced from her sister to Bingley. "I hope you have him begging," was all she said however and Jane seemed to sigh with relief.

"It suits him," she then said with a small smile around her lips that could almost be called mischievous.

"What do you think about making him Mum's personal entertainment program?" Lizzie suggested while they walked over to the other side of the waiting area where the Bennets held court.

"I'd say he has a lot to make up for with her," Jane smirked and linked arms with her sister.

"Thank you," Lizzie whispered, her head rubbing against Jane's shoulder like a cat.

"Because I provide distractions?" She laughed. "Lizzie, that's been my job since I-"

"No." She ran her finger over one of her sister's cheekbones. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

_(She'd only felt the threads the first time they threatened to tear and when they did it the second time, she was surprised how strong they were, how deeply they were stitched into her skin, connected to her bones – She hadn't realised that she'd never be able to love only part-time, separated and compartmentalized, hadn't understood that she'd always been burning.)_

"Why are you really angry at me?"

He stood next to her while she watched her baby sister through the window, lying there asleep in that much too big hospital bed. Her hair was shaved off and the head wrapped in gauze which made her sunken face, streaked with deep, red-blue shadows, look even paler. Her arms were a map of destruction, inflamed injection sites, scratches, small wounds and bruises – Lydia's hands looked like Craig's at his worst.

The car had hit her sideways and pretty much comminuted her right thigh bone and knee – the doctors weren't sure how well the numerous fractures would heal, but ruled out that her sister would ever be able to place any heavy strain on her leg from the beginning. Lydia would need to go easy on her body if even, well if she even woke up again.

Because as severe as the first, immediate impact had been on her, the consecutive fall and resulting head injury presented an even more serious problem. The doctors had to remove part of her cranial vault to relieve the brain pressure as a result of the swelling and only the next few hours would decide whether or not that procedure had been successful.

Everything depended on Lydia waking up again.

"It's not this thing about being deserted, so don't give me that crap. There's something else bothering you."

"Oh, are we being abstruse now and propose such ridiculous things as mind reading?" Lizzie replied. "What a shame, for conservations of that sort I need my special, bubblepink glasses."

"Considering your distaste for everything pink?" Craig snorted. "As if. And it's not mind reading if I can read your emotions off your face like an open book. You were never subtle, Lizzie."

"People often attest me quite the pokerface," Lizzie remarked absent-mindedly while contemplating such profound things like the meaning of glass panes as a metaphor for the modern world and quickly discarding them as being quite ridiculous and astonishingly cheesy.

"You're terrifying, Lizzie," Craig smirked. "But there are only two reasons for your fury and since you didn't exact revenge on some poor soul for supposedly hurting your loved ones in recent times, there's only one answer left." He stepped closer to her and she wished she could feel more than the emptiness surrounding her.

"You're afraid, Lizzie."

"Indeed?" Lizzie mocked and pointed at her sister with a lift of her chin. "What an exciting conclusion, Sherlock. I do hope you didn't break a nail performing that impressive bit of logic."

"That's not what I meant," Craig brushed her off. "The child will wake up again – limping perhaps, ashamed yes – but she'll wake up. But that's not what you're really afraid of, what unsettled you these past weeks. That's not the reason you're angry, Lizzie-bee."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I can smell it, you know?"

"And put the biologists out of commission, too? Really, Craig, you can't rob the world of its scientists. Not everyone can get themselves through the night with fairy tales and blundered generalizations."

"There was a time when your opinion on religion was a lot better."

"There was also time when I had reason to trust in it." She pushed her chin forward. "But only very few exculpate suicide, you know?"

"Under specific circumstances, they do."

She looked at him, with burning eyes and a quiet, hot fury in the pit of her stomach and lifted her chin. "Tell me what did you die for, Craig? For what god did you become a martyr?" She took a step back and before she turned around to stalk down the hallway, she whispered:

"Because don't you dare believe you didn't hurt anyone when you left us."

_(When Richard and Benwick arrived at the hospital two hours after them, Lizzie felt her heart beating in her throat and almost jumped, eyes searching for something behind them that wasn't there. The 'Where is he' got stuck in her throat and she could still taste the salt on the back of her tongue when she forced herself to breathe.)_

Her mother cried softly into her handkerchief, a steady sobbing and trembling of her body and Lizzie could hardly bear it.

"_Lord Jesus Christ_," Mrs Bennet whispered while she sat next to Lydia's bed, head bowed, a prayer rope in hand wandering between her fingers. Jane had gone down to the cafeteria to get some coffee and left Lizzie with her mother despite her sister's panicked expression. "_Son of God, have mercy on us._"

She'd seen her mother lose control many a time. The prospect of rich husbands and a few derisive comments on her father's part could turn her into a headless chicken on the search for an earthworm within seconds, but this –

"_Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us_."

This quiet desperation unsettled her, having often denied the woman any emotional depth and with a sinking feeling she remembered the many times Jane had begged her to come home for her mother's sake, remembered the figure in the fluttering dressing gown running after her car despite the snow at Christmas and gulped.

Guilt tasted like old socks on one's tongue, dry and rancid.

"_Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God_," her mother chanted, head rocking in time. "_Have mercy on us_."

She'd always insisted that family didn't mean blood. That genetics were not love, biology not trust and it was true. Family could be searched for and found and created and it was home and belonging and people laying claim to you.

But blood was something that acted like tough chewing gum, like a particularly sticky sort of honey and one had never been able to work with superglue without making a mess of it, so perhaps – perhaps a shared past wasn't that different.

With a sigh she sat down next to her mother, put a hand on her arm and this time there were two voices reciting those old words. "_Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us._"

It would never be like it used to be, that blind trust and innocence wouldn't return, but something, something stuck.

And didn't let go.

_(When Jane came back, coffee cups in hand and found them sitting like that, she had to struggle not to cry.)_

"Do you know why I'm afraid?"

The boy sitting on a cot at the end of the corridor and rolling a joint looked up for a second, a mocking smile on his lips and arched a brow.

"Of course," he said, licking the thin leaf to stick the ends together. "The question, moreover, is whether or not you know it, princess."

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

"You were my safety net," she then confessed. "The assurance that I wouldn't be standing on the edge of a multi-storey house's roof top again and not decide to take the stairs instead that time." Lizzie leaned her head back against the wall. "The fact that you lived – despite it all – was incentive and safety at the same time and now… Now I'm afraid."

"Good," was all Craig said and when Lizzie looked up, he was already standing.

"Wha-" Her mouth dropped open. "That's all you have to say to that? 'Good'? What's bloody 'good' about it? I'm positively terrified out of my bleeding mind and you-"

"It's good that you're afraid, Lizzie." He suddenly stood in front of her – close, so close – and kissed her forehead. "Because I wasn't."

"Craig-"

"Farewell, little Lizzie."

She ripped open her eyes, tried to reach for him with one hand, but he was smoke and shadows and also turning around that corner at the end of the corridor – _dead physicists altogether_ – and she ran after him, a burning in her throat and –

It wasn't Craig coming out of her sister's hospital room, wearing scrubs under a white coat and tiredly rubbing his eyes while putting the patient's chart into the shelf.

Darcy stopped dead in his tracks when he caught sight of her and Lizzie felt like everything was moving in slow-motion.

The orders over the phone, the change of surgeons, even the fact that he didn't pick up his bloody phone – suddenly all of it made sense and Lizzie, she –

She closed her eyes and when she opened them again he was gone.

_(When Lydia woke up on May, 27__th__ at 7:31 a.m. Lizzie was in the room and cried when her sister could only let out a whimper with the tube in her throat. "You stupid child," she sobbed when the nurse removed the apparatus and called in their family. "You stupid, stupid child.")_

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**A/N: Two more chapters to go plus epilogue... **_  
_


	35. Chapter 34 The Storm

**A/N: Much love and thanks for all the wonderful reviews to the last chapter - I send you hugs and flower pots full of the weirdly grown plants I grow. I do feel a lot better these days - thank you for your concern and sympathy - but the stress hasn't let up and I kind of, sort of fell into this project and so I'm doing my thesis this semester instead of next after all and it's all super stressful because I have to do half the work until mid July and then do exams and then write it all down and I'm... just exhausted thinking about it.  
**

**On a fun note - I did the dancing in the rain thing yesterday when in the middle of all that sunshine it started raining but the sun kept shining? Idk it was awesome! **

**So I might churn out something until then but no promises, but I think you'll all be deeply satisfied with this one and it kinda already works as a final chapter - BUT THERES ONE MORE AND AN EPILOGUE, okay? Okay. **

**Soundtrack: The Storm - The Airborne Toxic Event (LISTEN!) and Spirits - The Strumbellas**

**Disclaimer: Darcy is a bit of a badass in this one**

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**Chapter 34: The Storm**

They arrived too early and while the lecture theatre LT3022 gradually filled with excitedly chattering students, flittering around in the relaxed, post-exam atmosphere like a scattered cloud of flies, it dawned on Lizzie how foreign this life had become to her.

It wasn't much. Just as if one had taken two steps to the side and one forward and everything looked different and strangely contorted from this perspective and she blinked while Charlotte, Ed and Maddie told her all about the past few weeks – exams and essays and Priscilla Andrews absolutely _atrocious_ new hairstyle – as if she had to recalibrate to understand it all. Pemberley with its light and safety paled, turned illusive when this place became reality again and Lizzie had to pinch herself repeatedly to remind herself that it had all been real.

She hadn't heard from him at all.

In the past few weeks since she'd woken up from coma, Lydia had made steady progress. Her fractures seemed to heal well and the doctors had started to make plans for her impending physiotherapy, but for now the prescribed pain killers kept her calm and without withdrawal symptoms – the difficult part would come when she had to discontinue them later on, but nobody thought that far ahead at the moment – everyone was just happy that Mrs Bennet had stopped praying.

Her sister was conscious and spoke, Lizzie had just no idea what to tell her.

"She just wanted to be like you", Kitty had – with unexpected seriousness – remarked after she'd arrived in London together with Mary a few days after Lydia had drifted back to consciousness. She still popped her chewing gum, a nerve-wracking sound that had Lizzie wince. "You're her role model and whatnot."

"Are you all completely off the rocker?" Lizzie had snarled. "Why the bloody hell does she think that shooting white powder up her mucosae is a good way of imitating a damn role model? Not to mention how the fuck I'm supposed to be a role model?"

"Ask Lydia," Kitty had said shrugging and Mary had nodded eagerly and said something nice and nondescript about the stupidity of today's youth. Lizzie would have liked to smash both their heads into the next wall just to have something to do.

Lydia was astonishingly quiet whenever Lizzie was in the room and they'd started watching bad soap operas and Reality TV and not say a thing while some blonde airhead pined away on-screen.

"I have a bit of a soft spot for Tequila," Lizzie suddenly remarked one day while the drama about a vanished paternity test played out in front of them. "The antics with the salt and the limes make it fun enough, I suppose. Sometimes Vodka. Beer gives me a hangover, but if you mix the hard stuff and eat some crisps, you'll be fine." With her index finger she drew lines into the crisp white cotton fabric of the hospital blanket. "I never drink alone, because I'm afraid I won't stop again and there are weeks where my stomach churns at even the slightest mention of alcohol." Carefully she took her sister's fingers – rough, sore, almost see-through, small things – in her own hand and felt the hard plastic of the intravenous access on the back of Lydia's hand. "Cigarettes I can hardly stand though I love the smell. They remind me too much of Craig and…," she laughed, "Christmas. Weed is alright and Mus loves his cigars." She brushed it off. "I tried Craig's pills a few times, but that's not really for me – too uncontrollable, too unpredictable. Not to mention that you never know what exactly they put into that stuff." Lizzie sighed and turned to her sister, who was watching her out of strangely vacant and eerily pale eyes. "The point, Lyds, is that I don't have a bloody clue as to why you could think that all that bullshit sounded like jolly good idea and I… I'm sorry if I gave you the impression it was and I-"

"You're something like a legend in Meryton," Lydia said after a while, her voice hoarse and she pressed her dry, chapped lips together. "The elder ones are still angry and whatnot, but the young people… They think you're so bloody _cool_ – wild, wild Lizzie Bennet – and you – Lizzie Bennet – you're my sister and I… I just wanted you to like me, wanted you to think I'm cool, cool enough for London and for you take me with you and-" She closed her eyes. "But you always ran away and even in London you wanted nothing to do with me – you just _moved out of the sodding apartment_ without even saying anything!" She yelled the final part and Lizzie could only watch her in dawning horror. "And then Wickham came and he knew you and he was so _cool_ and I thought, I thought that if I were just loud enough, cool enough, you'd notice me, but you… you never _saw_ me!"

Lydia's outburst reminded her of Charlotte's so long ago. In a way. But this time it wasn't anger clawing at her insides, not incomprehension at the sight of someone else's perspective, no aversion to have one's own flaws presented on a silver platter, Lizzie was just –

Yes, she was sad.

"I couldn't," she said after a while. "I'm not sure how much you know, Lyds, about what happened back then." She gulped. "But you reminded me too much – _Sod that_ – even Jane reminds me too much of it and I told myself it wasn't my responsibility, that I couldn't possibly have anything more to give…"

Lydia gulped. "Jane just said we shouldn't listen to people's gossip. That we shouldn't listen to _Mum_. But you haven't seen her, Lizzie. Mum – she cried so much, but I don't think she ever understood-"

"I don't think she ever will," Lizzie replied, humming a bit.

"But then… _what did happen_?"

Lizzie looked at her, took Lydia's index finger and ran its tip over the lines marking her own hand. "He broke my fingers," she then said quietly. "My wrist once. A black eye in January…The rest I can barely remember." Her sister just watched her out of huge eyes, the vacant expression gone for the moment. "I'd already broken up with him when I found out I was pregnant." Lizzie smiled with acerbic sweetness. "Seventeen – Lyds – I was seventeen when I was pregnant and seventeen when I lost it. It was a miscarriage, but everyone thought – even Matthew thought it was on purpose. Even Mum thought that, you know?"

Lydia opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out of it.

"You're my sister," Lizzie then said. "That's what you are, despite it all – blood and genes and the god damn trees on the meadow behind our house – and I won't – don't ask me to fill that role to perfection. Don't think that I'm the answer and that I could save you, then really, I barely manage to save myself and that only by a hair's breadth." She squeezed Lydia's hand. "But you're my sister, just as much as Jane, Kitty, Mary and Anne and I promise I'll do better, okay? But for now… you know, I think maybe you should try being yourself for a little while and not somebody else."

"Will you… will you be there?"

"Of course."

Her parents and younger sisters had moved in with Jane and Charlie who were living in the old penthouse again – they kept separate bedrooms however for the time being and Lizzie who hadn't wanted to move into her old flat and couldn't keep living in one of the rooms offered by Rosings, moved – given the danger of being overcrowded by a plethora of Bennets in said penthouse and Anne's and Wentworth's gooey honeymoon eyes – in with the Grovelands in their family home in Notting Hill.

It was like a small piece of Pemberley in the middle of this giant city. However, it was a bit loud and spiked with accidental explosions, but Lizzie loved it.

"What do you think about how the exam went?" Ed asked and leaned back in his seat, hands crossed behind his head.

"Don't know," Maddie replied delicately and shot him a glare. "Depends on how many brain cells you had left to spell out 'ambiguous'."

"Well, contrary to you I don't need glasses to see what's right in front of me, so perhaps that rather applies to you," the ginger-haired boy countered and Lizzie and Charlotte looked at each other in alarm.

"I don't need glasses!" Maddie cried out in outrage and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Your hair colour tells a different story, though," was Ed's helpful comment and he pointed with obvious disgust at the biting magenta colour Maddie had dyed her hair with instead of the previous midnight blue. "Although one could sooner diagnose you with acritochromacy than prescribe you glasses."

"I'm not bloody _colour blind_! I can see a church by daylight and don't you dare think you could save yourself that misery. I saw you!"

"I have no sodding idea what you think you saw, you mad shrew!"

"Hey!" both Lizzie and Charlotte yelled in unison, glaring at Ed who raised his hands in surrender.

"I saw you!" Maddie shouted angrily. "Together with that blonde bitch outside the jeweller close to St. Pauls, you slimy, disgusting piece of-"

"Maddie!" Charlotte scolded her, but was interrupted by Ed who leaned forwards, eyes feverish with excitement.

"That's why you threw my stuff out the window? Because you saw me with Christine?"

"Christine? But why is your sister in London-"

"And she's strawberry blonde, you stupid, blind bat. Perhaps I should've gotten you glasses rather than-"

"Rather than what?" Maddie's voice was shrill and in the meantime half of the occupants of the lecture theatre had turned in their seats to watch today's entertainment. Lizzie groaned and buried her head in her arms. She'd only come along to this shortly appointed post exam discussion so she wouldn't completely loose contact with university and so that she could talk with the examination office about rewriting some of the exams she'd missed. Officially, Jane and Anne had reported her sick and gotten her a leave of absence with Richard's help, but Lizzie had enough of sitting around uselessly - it let wild thoughts pop up freely.

"Ed, show her," Charlotte then demanded, just as fed up with the drama after probably having had to listen to all that hue and cry all semester without Lizzie as a buffer.

"But-" the ginger haired boy protested, but Charlotte's harsh glare had him digging around in his pockets.

"Just for the record," he remarked when he pulled the small, velvety box out of the unknown depths of his backpack and threw it at Maddie. "I planned the whole shebang. Roses, Sinatra, I even bought that stupidly expensive champagne and I would've already given it to you if you hadn't jumped on me like a wild fury and broken all my records just because I asked my sister for advice about your sodding ring size and-"

The girl with the magenta coloured hair sat there dumbfounded and open-mouthed once the small box had dropped into her fingers and without even bothering to open it she jumped up and – no one knew how the hell she'd managed to scramble over two people and one desk – fell into Ed's lap more or less gracefully where she manged to silence him with a good amount of tongue and some strategic use of teeth.

"You crazy bitch," Ed muttered when she finally let go of him, but the wide, soppy grin spreading across his face softened the insult into something more endearing.

"Arse," Maddie whispered and kissed him again while the rest of the lecture theatre's occupants cheered on, Lizzie acted like she needed to puke and Charlotte assessed the quality of the diamond that graced the delicate silver ring.

"Congratulations", someone interrupted all that excitement with a sudden slam of the door and the muffled impact of a brief case hitting the teacher's desk and Lizzie's mouth fell open. "The University will surely be delighted to know that their furniture shall be spared in the future and the City of London might also be pleased to receive many less phone calls about nightly disturbances, although I was told to inform you that the janitor has absolutely no desire to catch you two in various closets and storage rooms on the University's grounds ever again and politely suggests you two find yourselves a nice flat in some remote area."

With those words William Darcy had transfixed the whole lecture theatre and while Maddie blushingly disentangled herself from Ed, half the students looked like they'd just seen a ghost, Lizzie didn't know what to say, not to mention _feel_, Darcy simply arched a brow and smirked a bit mockingly.

"Shut that mouth, Weatherly and take the pen out of your nose. I'm neither dead nor been abducted by aliens and if you haven't learned how to use a thermometer by now, surely this is not the time or place to practice that particular skill."

"Uhm… Excuse me, but where is Professor Leestone?" the poor sod asked, bashfully putting his pen back into his pencil case.

"Somewhere in the Caribbean Sea, I presume." Darcy hummed with amusement and proceeded to roll his eyes at some students' horrified gasps.

"On a ship. On a _cruise trip_," he corrected. "For heaven's sake there are much simpler ways of getting rid of people than drowning them in the Caribbean, believe me. Not to mention that discussing an exam on ethics doesn't rank that high on my list of things I'd commit murder for. A first edition of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' on the other hand…"

Lizzie's fellow students didn't exactly look reassured and Charlotte slowly shook her head. "Whatever that guy's high on," she muttered. "I want it." Then she looked at Lizzie and grinned.

"Cheers. So while Amanda is in the Caribbean sipping overpriced cocktails, I am here to discuss your exam with you." He raised a stack of neatly piled papers with apparent scrutiny and nodded. "As far as I can tell, very nice. Good average, clean answers, a few of you even manged to write 'objectivus' and 'subjectivus' correctly. I'm impressed."

A few students grinned delightedly, some even raised their hands for a high five, but they all lost their exuberance at Darcy's next words. "Oh well, the kingdom's glorious elite. Medicine's next Einsteins. You really did manage to read Kant and understand enough to pass a simple quiz. Really quite impressive." He clapped his hands. "But you're just a bunch of exotic plants that have never seen the world outside the four walls of your glasshouse and wilt at the merest hint of frost, because you forgot something very basic." Darcy leaned forward, a smile playing around his lips. "You forgot to think."

"But-", a group of students protested. "Impossible!" squeaked Weatherly and Charlotte, too, looked properly enraged.

"Well, well," Darcy tried to appease them. "I know, I know what they say _– Oh look, a pink elephant_!" he interrupted himself, pointing at the wall on the far end of the lecture theatre behind the mob's heads who all promptly turned around to see the supposed, strangely coloured animal. "But in all honesty, your answers all read like perfect copies out of 'Critique of Pure Reason' and we all do know that we no longer live in 18th century Germany – Praise the Lord! – and no one wants to read that book more than once."

Again, Darcy clapped his hands and Lizzie – eyes and throat burning – couldn't help but notice that something about him was different. He still wore slacks and a suit jacket, but he'd exchanged the dress shirt for one of the soft, grey cotton ones he seemed to possess several versions of, his hair was in disarray, his face open and she tasted something – sweet and bitter – on the tip of her tongue.

The light went off and the projector started working. "Imagine," Darcy said, inexplicably holding a bag of sweets in his hand. "I know some of you might find that to be a difficult feat, but we will try regardless. Imagine you – as a doctor - are the first one to arrive at the scene of an accident. There are two cars. There are five injured people sitting in one car and one in the other and even though you know that help is on the way, you also know they'll be too late. You can save the people in the car you go to first. So what do you do?"

A girl sitting in the first row on the right raised her hand. "Save the five people?" She made it sound like a question.

"Excellent – and why?" Darcy asked, throwing her some candy. The girl stammered a bit. "Because they are more people?"

"So it would be the sum of saved lives deciding under the assumption that every life is worth the same?" The majority of students nodded.

"Okay. Then let's assume the cars collided close to a cliff and became so wedged into each other that you would have to push the car with the one person off that cliff so that you could save the five people. Who would you save then?"

Silence greeted him.

"But that's absurd," Charlotte came forward. "For one, we couldn't possibly push a whole car aside without help and besides, there are also other factors that might influence our decision."

"Good point." Darcy threw her some candy, too. "What factors are you talking about, Miss Lucas?"

"Severity of injuries, age and state of consciousness – Goodness, even the weather can have an influence."

Darcy nodded, shot Lizzie a quick grin and then turned back to his audience. "Let's try something less 'absurd' as Miss Lucas put it." Charlotte turned scarlet. "Let's assume you have a heavily pregnant woman in the OR and there are complications. You are unable to stabilise the woman without hurting the baby and a caesarean would mean the mother's sure death. What do you do?"

He raised a hands as if to ask for someone to come forward, but no one said anything.

"What about relatives?" Millie Rosenthal asked. "The baby's father – shouldn't he decide?"

"Not enough time. _Tic Toc_. You only have a few minutes until it's too late." Darcy clapped his hands in rhythm with the passing seconds. "Come on, faster, faster. While you're still deciding the mother is dying and the baby asphyxiates. Come on, what do you want to do?"

Lizzie saw her fellow students descend into a right panic, saw them blinking around in confusion while Darcy counted the last minute. "…Five, Four, Three, Two, One and – _Dead_. That's it. Too late for both of them." He looked at them sharply. "You waited too long."

"But, Professor!" the next bunch of students were up in arms. "That's not fair. There are rules for that – every hospital-"

Darcy actually rolled his eyes at that. "Rules," he spat out with barely concealed contempt, "won't help you when you have to make a decision in the fraction of a second and they won't help you live with aftermath of these decisions. Any grey parrot can regurgitate words, but you all have a head on your shoulders and hopefully a functioning brain in it – so _dare to be wise_!"

Lizzie couldn't help but smile. No matter how confused she was, how contradictory this maelstrom of desire and guilt, shame and wanting was – she couldn't fight that little bubbling of happiness and it almost hurt.

Almost.

"Kant uses his categorical imperative. '_Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law_.' Hedonism says that we all strive for lust and to avoid pain in our lives. Kohlberg connects these two seemingly so contradictory approaches by establishing six stages of moral development, but at no point does he say that any of them is better or more desirable than the other. And that's the point. There's no right or wrong, no guarantee that any path offers the ultimate solution. In the end, the only person you have to answer to is yourself and philosophy is just the art of thinking. So _think_."

He handed out the exams after that. Red streaked sheets of paper and Lizzie – heart beating, pounding, drumming – sat there and didn't know where to look. Charlotte had given up her grinning, too nervous about not having thought enough, but Darcy just handed the girl her papers with an encouraging smile and a 'Very interesting, Miss Lucas' that had Charlotte squealing in delight and Lizzie shut her eyes even more tightly.

She looked up when a book landed right in front of her with a dull thud. Surprised insomuch that she barely registered that it was her own journal – the book she'd given him weeks ago, her mouth fell open yet again.

"Uhm…," she said, a complete and almost panicked blankness in her mind, blinked and reached for the journal. "Thanks," she said for lack of a better alternative and it was – it was not enough. "I mean… I…," she stammered, frowning. "Thank you. I'm really… really grateful." For Lydia, she added quietly in her mind. For me. For what you did. For Pemberley, this show today, for not being perfect.

He nodded, a twitch around the corners of his mouth and while Maddie and Ed questioned her strange behaviour and Charlotte giggled over her stammering, Darcy said his goodbyes to the group in the lecture hall and left Lizzie there with the journal in hand.

"What was that about?" Charlotte tittered after the former professor had disappeared through the doorway and let the chaos explode in his wake. "Thank you? You're grateful? What the fuck for?"

Lizzie still stared at the journal as if she could barely believe it and the nausea in her stomach danced, tying knots in her guts and she just didn't know, didn't know –

"He performed the surgery on Lydia," she then admitted. "Saved her life without saying anything and since then…" She shrugged, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "Radio silence."

"Until today." Charlotte pointed at the book. "And I'd say that was a pretty impressive show he put on there."

"Fuck, that's true," Ed also called out. "What was up with him today? Did he find some good pills and a willing surgeon to get that stick out of his arse?"

Lizzie glared at him so fiercely that the red boy almost flinched. "Wohow," he tried to assuage her, both hands raised in surrender. "Just a joke, no reason to step into angry-kitten-mode."

"Kitten?" Charlotte sniggered. "I don't think you'd survive it should she decide to attack."

"Nah," Maddie remarked, poking Lizzie's side in provocation. "I think that cat has lost her claws. Look how dreamily she just stares off into space. Like a love struck teenager!"

Lizzie struck after the poking fingers and snarled.

"Well, I know that my timing and execution is pretty much unbeatable when it comes to romance," Ed began and laughed at Maddie's and Charlotte's protests. "But this," he pointed at the lecture hall, at Lizzie's journal, "This is pretty good, too."

Lizzie stared at him in bewilderment. "What exactly do you mean?" she choked out. Her stomach was still doing summersaults. "He just gave me back my journal."

"Lizzie…" That was Maddie.

"Hmm?"

"Ed says I'm the blind one, but… are you really that bloody stupid or are you just acting that way?"

"I don't know what-" She blinked around in confusion.

"Lizzie, open the damn book," Charlotte urged her and Lizzie who barely knew what happened around her opened the tattered leather cover and with a sinking feeling she discovered the still taped together pages. She didn't know if Darcy had read and then taped them back together or if he hadn't even glanced at them.

It was confusing and she barely knew which alternative had her insides jump and which one had them fall. She thumbed through the pages when with a soft rustling a folded piece of paper fell out of the back of the journal.

Her hands were dripping with sweat and clammy when she reached for it, blood pounding in her ears.

"I have to go," she whispered, reaching for journal, bag and scarf in a scattered heap. "I have to go!" she pressed out, louder this time, the droning increased, but she pushed it back. Faster, she thought, I have to be faster. Lizzie knew the temptation, the sweet singsong that promised oblivion and numbness like slowly rolling, steadily crashing waves at the coast.

Ed and Maddie jumped up to free the way out of the row, but Charlotte grabbed her arm. "Mierda, Lizzie, where do you want to go?"

"Think," Lizzie replied nonsensically and crumpled the paper in her hand. "I… I need time… I have to… I have to think."

The Spanish girl nodded, her dark eyes solemn. She'd grown calmer in the past months, more mature. It was like one had to constantly take a step back in order to see her fully. "A word of advice, Lizzie? He wouldn't have gone through all that effort just to say goodbye forever, you know?"

"Who knows," Lizzie said with an involuntary laugh between teeth and lips. "He's an idiot and an alien. Not a good combination."

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "Run, Lizzie," she said. "Run."

* * *

_Lizzie – _

_I'm sorry that I didn't get in touch sooner and in such an inconvenient way at that. Mobil phones are more practical, Whats App a lot more modern and according to Richard even smoke signs can be better understood, but perhaps – perhaps we should rather play this like a game of chess without a stop watch. With enough room to breathe and no wall in one's back. _

_This is not an ultimatum, no gun to your head, no conditional existences. This is just me and the fact that I have to go back to Pemberley for a little while. The research institute and Giana are there and need my attention, but this here – _

_This is not farewell, okay? Trust me that I won't leave again, not like that, not before you tell me to. _

_This here – you're the one controlling it. You decide, no walls, no compulsion to move and I won't leave, I promise. I just have to go for a bit. _

_You are important, Lizzie Bennet. You know the other three-word sentences. _

_William Darcy_

* * *

When the tube came to a stop with a squeak and a wheezing sound Lizzie Bennet was one of the first ones to fall out of the train at Great Portland Street with a stream of people and she –

Lizzie ran.

It was frustrating trying to do that in a crowded underground station, more of an obstacle course than a real sprint and she almost groaned when she remembered that there was just a tiny, old lift and an emergency exit with way too many small steps that one could barely all climb alive at Great Portland Street.

Her blood pulsing, her heart pounding she stood there silent as a stone in the crowded lift, other people's body parts and smells too close for comfort and despite that she tried breathing in deeply, tried sorting out her thoughts and come up with a plan.

On the inside she was screaming.

It was the letter that dispelled the last of her insecurities, dumped the guilt in a box labelled 'Deal with later' and let her find enough resolve which in turn turned the nausea into air and good intention with enough adrenaline.

She had… She had to… run.

She'd run once before. Almost half a year ago she'd run through Belgravia and then Camden and still been too late. This time she knew that there was no too late, that she had time and space and still… And still she ran.

She almost knocked down the poor sod trying to hand her a copy of 'The Evening Standard' and she felt this boundless, prickling feeling of happiness, this first surge up of something other than dimmed emotions and she wanted to laugh. It was so simple. So straightforward.

Almost idiot-proof.

Running, Jumping, Falling. Once you jump there are two possibilities. Crashing or catching. And as absolutely, mind-numbingly terrifying closing one's eyes and simply trusting that there's someone on the other side catching you can be, it was also so unbelievably exhilarating.

Lizzie ran down the street, down to intersecting ones, then turned right. She'd only been here once before but the memory had been burned into her brain with iron and salt. The third house on the left side, a blue door and one helpful neighbour who was just leaving the house. The apartment was located on the top floor.

God, she thought. If he even still lives there.

He did. And the expression on his face when she walked right through the doorway, panting, hair a mess, eyes wild and bright and such determination etched into the curve of her mouth that he had to gulp for a second was just priceless.

She wanted to laugh, so drunken on this champagne prickling, summersault turning feeling in her veins that she could barely find words for.

Instead she cupped his face with both hands and if one had to name the expression in his eyes it would have been bewildered amazement and perhaps a pinch of fear. But that was good. Fear was – Fear was good.

And she breathed in deeply – cigarettes and citrons – and then Lizzie Bennet jumped.

"You idiot," she whispered before she was the one pushing him against a ball, pressing bodies together – skin against skin, fine hairs rising, a piece of soft cotton in the tight grip of a hand, hot, so hot –

Darcy breathed in sharply.

"Lizzie, I-" His mouth opened in that near perfect angle and Lizzie, blood pulsing slower, deeper, traced it with her lips – one, two times – laughing lightly in his mouth and enjoying the friction of skin, the lazy drag of spit over flesh, the threat of teeth and the firework of goose bumps trailing up and down her spine.

"You're an idiot," she whispered again. He'd placed his hands loosely on her hips, cautious and overwhelmed at the same time and she saw the thoughts chasing each other in his mind. "Okay? Are you with me?"

"I am-"

"An idiot." She laughed, pushing her hands under his shirt, running them over warm skin and then leaned forward to place a line of delicate kisses on his jawline. His hands tightened around her hips, one thumb stroking the small gap between jeans and top and slipping beneath it.

"With me?" Lizzie repeated, pulling the shirt over his head.

"I… I'm here." He pressed his forehead against hers, breathed her in. A hand slid up her back and she heard his breathing speed up when he noticed that she wasn't wearing anything underneath that top. The hand wandered to the front, tracing the underside of her breasts –

Then he kissed her. And it was so much, there was so much and Lizzie –

Lizzie fell.

"I'm here," he whispered with her breath in his mouth. There were too many hands that wanted, tugged and teared, teeth gliding over skin - biting, tongues tasting salt and bitter iron, a hint of cola and toothpaste and it wasn't enough. There was clothing bothering and detaining, buttons that didn't open, zip fasteners that snagged and torn seams because they wanted too much too fast and Lizzie wanted to rejoice and cry at the same time, wanted to crawl in deeper, _deeper_, wanted so much. "I'm not leaving."

He caught her.

"I won't let you."

Or perhaps she caught him. It was difficult to say when they both jumped at the same time.

* * *

A/N: **And we're back to the prologue...**


End file.
